After yesterday, I really hadn’t planned on writing about Angelina Jolie and her decision to undergo bilateral mastectomies again, except perhaps as a more serious piece next week on my not-so-super-secret other blog where The Name of the Doctor is revealed on a weekly basis. As I mentioned yesterday, there are a number of issues about the decision that could use my professional attention, from the process, to the evidence, to the issue of how the surgery was handled. Oh, and if I do decide to do that I’m sure I won’t be able to resist a mention of some of the quackery that oozed out from underneath the darker recesses of the quackosphere, but the division of labor I enforce usually reserves the more “Insolent” takedowns for this blog. That means I can’t resist the pull of the other quacks who’ve descended upon Angelina Jolie in droves. As a result, I can’t resist taking a look at a carefully selected subset of them.

With her breasts removed, she says her risk of breast cancer is now reduced to a mere 5 percent. The same bizarre logic can also be applied to men who cut off their testicles to “prevent testicular cancer” or people who cut out their colons to “prevent colorectal cancer.” But that would be insane, so nobody does that, because one of the most basic principles of medicine is that you don’t subject patients to the considerable risks and costs of surgery and anesthesia to remove organs that have no disease!

Wrong, Mike. Actually, people do remove their colons to prevent colorectal cancer. Adams is even more ignorant than I thought, apparently never having heard of, for example, familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP). It’s a condition in the colon in which there are numerous polyps that predispose patients with condition to colon cancer such that by age 40 or 50 the risk approaches 100%. The treatment? Prophylactic colectomy. Yes, that’s right, removal of the colon to prevent colorectal cancer. There’s also hereditary non polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC), which involves a mutation in a gene with a similar function to that of BRCA1, the gene in which Angelina Jolie had a mutation that predisposed to breast cancer, specifically a gene involved in the repair of DNA damage. The risk from HNPCC isn’t as high as it is for FAP, but it’s plenty high, more than high enough to justify prophylactic surgery to avoid colon cancer.

As for the example of testicular cancer, there are no known mutations that predispose to testicular cancer at nearly as high a risk as the risk for breast cancer conferred by BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations or for colorectal cancer conferred by FAP or HNPCC mutations. Also, testicular cancer is a rather uncommon cancer compared to breast cancer and colon cancer, which means that the chance of getting it in the average man is much smaller than the risk of colorectal cancer. It’s a dumb example, comparing apples and oranges. Of course, dumb examples are Adams’ stock-in-trade.

Next up, Adams tries to make you think that he understands more about cancer than he actually does. First, he claims that women are being “lied to” and that the readers of the New York Times who read it. Then he writes:

The very idea that breast cancer is a “percent risk” is a complete lie. In reality, everyone has cancer micro-tumors in their bodies, including myself. Cancer is not a disease you just “get” like being randomly struck by lightning. It’s something you must “manage” or “prevent” day by day, meal by meal, through a lifestyle choice that involves vitamin D supplementation, nutrition, superfoods, vegetable juices and avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals and radiation.

So when a doctor says you have a “chance” of getting cancer, what he’s implying is that you have no control over cancer, and that’s an outright lie. Cancer quackery, in other words.

In fact, this is a very common theme among the quacks, namely that you have near-absolute control over whether you get cancer or not. For example, it’s echoed by one of my most despised cancer quacks, Robert O. Young, who has also jumped all over the Angelina Jolie case to write Acids From Lifestyle and Dietary Choice Causes Breast Cancer NOT the BRCA1 GENE. Yes, he even uses all caps in his titles, one true sign of a quack. To Young, The One True Cause of Breast Cancer is not any sort of gene mutation, but rather “acid” from diet and organochlorines. I can’t tell for sure. He can’t seem to make up his mind. What is clear based on the evidence is that, even if organochlorides are a major cause of breast cancer (and the evidence cited is not that strong), they are no way as potent a cause as BRCA1 mutations.

Meanwhile, Adams can’t resist flaunting his ignorance:

The very idea that breast cancer is a “percent risk” is a complete lie. In reality, everyone has cancer micro-tumors in their bodies, including myself. Cancer is not a disease you just “get” like being randomly struck by lightning. It’s something you must “manage” or “prevent” day by day, meal by meal, through a lifestyle choice that involves vitamin D supplementation, nutrition, superfoods, vegetable juices and avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals and radiation.

So when a doctor says you have a “chance” of getting cancer, what he’s implying is that you have no control over cancer, and that’s an outright lie. Cancer quackery, in other words.

While it’s true that all of us have “cancer micro-tumors” within our bodies, it’s a complete misunderstanding of risk. The observation that we all have cancerous cells within our bodies says nothing about the risk that one or more of them will progress to a macroscopic cancer that will actually threaten health and life, nor does it mean that you have to “manage” or “prevent” cancer day by day. Yes, there are cancers that are greatly influenced by lifestyle (lung cancer being caused by smoking is perhaps the strongest example), but there are also cancers that have a clear genetic cause. BRCA1-caused breast cancers and ovarian cancers are examples of these, and all the “lifestyle interventions” in the world won’t significantly decrease the risk of cancer. Well, all save one, but the quacks won’t like it. I’m referring, of course, to Tamoxifen, a product of what Adams would view as the evil of big pharma. Adams further claims:

Indole-3-carbinol (I3C), by the way, a natural chemical found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage, offers powerful prevention against BRCA1 gene expression. But you don’t hear cancer doctors telling women to “eat more cabbage” because that doesn’t make the cancer industry any money. You can buy I3C as a potent nutritional supplement from a variety of sources. It’s literally cancer prevention in a capsule.

So the whole “chance” argument is pure quackery. There is no chance involved in whether you get cancer. It’s all cause and effect. You are either living a pro-cancer lifestyle and therefore growing cancer, or you’re living an anti-cancer lifestyle and keeping cancer in check so that it never becomes a problem. Cause and effect is what results in either the growth of cancer tumors or the prevention of cancer tumors. There is no “luck” involved.

First off, Adams gets it wrong (as usual). I3C doesn’t suppress BRCA1 expression. Rather, it increases it. That’s how it’s thought to work to potentially decrease the risk of certain cancers. As one of my readers pointed out, making more BRCA1 doesn’t do much good if the BRCA1 produced is not functional because of a mutation. The second part of Adams’ “argument” (if you can call it that) is even more ridiculous. Every biological process involves a stochastic process; i.e., chance. The claim that there is no “luck” involved betrays such a profound ignorance of biological processes that it’s hard to fathom how Adams can walk and breathe at the same time.

Despite the commonplace refusal of so-called ‘evidence-based medicine’ to acknowledge the actual evidence of genetics, we moved into a Post-Genomic era over a decade ago following the completion of first draft of the entire human genome in 2000. At that moment, the central dogma of molecular biology – that our DNA controls protein expression, and therefore disease risk – was disproved. Our genome was found to contain roughly 20,000 genetic instructions – not even enough to account for the 100,000 proteins in the human body!

As a result, we must now accept that factors beyond the control of the gene, known as epigenetic factors, and largely determined by a combination of nutrition, psychospiritual states that feed back into our physiology, lifestyle factors, and environmental exposures, constitute as high as 95% of what determines any disease risk. In fact, even the psychological trauma associated with being diagnosed with cancer can drive malignancy via adrenaline-mediated multi-drug resistance,[i] and according to a recent NEJM study, lead up to a 26-fold increased risk of heart-related deaths in the seven days following diagnosis.[ii]

Yes, when I spoke about how quacks view the word “epigenetics” in much the same way that the view the word “quantum,” basically as a simile for the word “magic.” In the quacks’ eye view, epigenetics is capable of anything, and we can magically control our own gene expression through diet, exercise, and even just thinking happy thoughts, all of which, it is claimed, alter gene activity through epigenetics. Yes, if diet can’t change your gene expression to whatever you like it through epigenetics, then wishing makes it so through happy thoughts. Except that it doesn’t.

Ji also beats on a straw man, namely the belief that you either “have the gene” or don’t when it comes to BRCA1 and BRCA2. Of course, because popular understanding of how BRCA1 mutations predispose to cancer are simplistic does not mean that that’s what physicians tell their patients. Indeed, whenever BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations are reported, the risk associated with the specific mutation(s) detected is listed alongside the result. Some BRCA mutations confer high risk of breast and ovarian cancer, such as the 87% risk that Angelina Jolie was told that she had. Some confer much less risk. Some are referred to as being of “uncertain significance,” which means we don’t really know how much of a risk they do or do not confer. Ji twists himself in knots (the same way he twists science and logic in knots) when he perseverates over an observation that there is actually a BRCA2 mutation that is associated with a lower risk of cancer. There is a problem, though. The main point of the editorial cited was not that BRCA testing doesn’t matter but that family history should trump gene testing. Of course, that is exactly the way that most genetic counselors practice; they don’t blow off a negative BRCA test in a patient with a strong family history of cancer. Such patients are still treated as being at high risk. The whole point is a bit of a straw man.

Ji is also enamored of the concept of overdiagnosis, just like Mike Adams. Only, he expresses it differently:

Another concerning blind spot in the framing of Jolie’s decision is that approximately 70,000 breast cancers (31% of annual breast cancers diagnoses) are misdiagnosed by the vast breast cancer ‘awareness’ and treatment complex each year.[vi] These are not just so-called “zero stage” breast cancers such as Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), which arguably should be reclassified as non-cancerous normal variations in breast morphology, but 50% are known as early-stage “invasive” breast cancers [view NEJM study video analysis here].

How many of these women, having received a mammography-detected diagnosis of breast cancer and then a follow up BRCA test, believed that the gene must have therefore “caused” the “cancer”? The popularization of this crude way of understanding natural, sometimes self-limiting variations in breast morphology as cases of “breast cancer” is itself a malignancy that should be prevented and treated with healthy doses of the very ‘evidence’ that the so-called ‘evidence-based’ medical system claims to possess as a differentiating factor from other, more ancient, plant- and nutrition-based medical traditions.

Uh, no. While it is true that overdiagnosis is a big issue in cancer screening right now, just because there is significant overdiagnosis of cancer does not mean that the imputation of causation to BRCA1 mutations for cancers that might be overdiagnosed is incorrect. Moreover, it goes way too far to advocate reclassifying DCIS as “noncancerous normal variations in breast morphology.” It is not, and it is known to be a lesion that progresses to invasive breast cancer with a high frequency. That many DCIS lesions never progress and some even regress does not make them a “normal variant.” Ji refers to the NEJM study of overdiagnosis in breast cancer published in December, but he clearly doesn’t understand its significance.

It’s clear that Angelina Jolie’s decision to try to lower her very high risk of breast cancer will be the gift that keeps on giving—to quacks. They despise the concept of prophylactic surgery almost as much as they despise the concept of genetic predisposition to disease.

499 Comments

Why do these quacks always refer to breast surgery as “mutilation”? It’s a horribly negative connotation that I’m certain makes many women delay seeing a doctor about a breast lump. (In fact, wasn’t there a French TV presenter some years ago who turned down surgery for a breast lump precisely because of that, turned to a variety of quacks and ended up dying from metasized breast cancer?)
Notice how it always seems to be the male quacks who call it that. Yet when do we hear Mikey & co object to breast enhancement surgery as “mutilation”?

Why do these quacks always refer to breast surgery as “mutilation”? It’s a horribly negative connotation that I’m certain makes many women delay seeing a doctor about a breast lump. (In fact, wasn’t there a French TV presenter some years ago who turned down surgery for a breast lump precisely because of that, turned to a variety of quacks and ended up dying from metasized breast cancer?)

Our genome was found to contain roughly 20,000 genetic instructions – not even enough to account for the 100,000 proteins in the human body!

Excuse me, some ignoramus just tramped on my field of expertise and I have to go lie down.
But short answer for any curious lurker: between intron alternative splicing, mRNA modifications and post-translational modifications of the proteins, just 20,000 genes could go a long way toward making hundreds of thousands of proteins. And they do, the protein content of a cell is insanely complicated.

@ Sophia8

Why do these quacks always refer to breast surgery as “mutilation”?[…]Notice how it always seems to be the male quacks who call it that.

I think you answered your own question. Women seen as sex objects, or maybe more generously, seen from the outside, not necessarily as a piece of furniture, but still defined by their secondary sexual characteristics. Whatever you do, don’t touch the boobs.
(now I’m thinking of it, I didn’t see as much outrage about the possibility of a woman asking to have her ovaries removed – you don’t see it, and who cares if she couldn’t have children anymore?)
To be fair, breasts are not a trivial part of women, be it from an individual (or so I have been told) or a cultural/societal point of view. It’s understandable it may be a polarizing issue.

It’s interesting that the male organ counterpart to breasts most of us come with are testicules. They don’t have the same physiological function (feeding children versus making children, respectively), but they both share a similar cosmetic/societal function – to define that is female or male.

Yet, the outcry against surgery is very irrational, if not outright selfish. Better for the person these quacks/naysayers are talking to to keep their outside sexual integrity than be “maimed”, even if this may ultimately do them harm.
Death before dishonor.

Our genome was found to contain roughly 20,000 genetic instructions – not even enough to account for the 100,000 proteins in the human body!

Excuse me, some ignoramus just tramped on my field of expertise and I have to go lie down.
But short answer for any curious lurker: between intron alternative splicing, mRNA modifications and post-translational modifications of the proteins, just 20,000 genes could go a long way toward making hundreds of thousands of proteins. And they do, the protein content of a cell is insanely complicated.

Wasn’t that “100,000 proteins” figure pretty much estimated by counting spots on a 2D gel? Of course it would take an ignoramus to ignore post-transcriptional and -translational events. Ignorance, fortunately, is curable but if he is being deliberately wrong to make a point than that is just inexcusable.

If someone were told, after all, that because of genetics/family history there was an 87% chance that they’d die in their 50’s of appendicitus, no one would critiize them if they elected to have a prophylactic appendectomy–especially if we had the capability as we do following breast surgery to perform reconstructive surgery to the pointthere’d be no comestic evidence they’d had their appendix removed.

If I knew that otherwise the odds were a greater than one in 5 I wouldn’t live long enough to see my kids grow up, graduate college, get married, etc. the list of non-essential body parts I’d willingly sacrifice to eliminate the threat is actually pretty extensive…

Nigel @12: “Lappe JM” gets plenty of results. She certainly looks like a legitimate researcher but I’ll leave it to experts to decide whether she’s shown that Vit D has a role to play in cancer prevention.

Heliantus brings up an important point: women being seen from the outside.

Mike, Gary and Sayer Ji are men commenting about how a woman “disfigured” herself. Not one of these woo-meisters address how surgery enables a woman to live a more peaceful life, not constantly worrying about if she’ll get cancer. Ms Jolie discusses how she wants to give her children re-assurance that she’ll be around but it also enables HER to live with less fear. What’s wrong with that?

By surveying woo, I’ve learned that it often focuses on external appearances: they’re selling youth and beauty to an audience which may be primarily female. If you skim through their websites’ stores you’ll find many formulae that affect looks: improved skin and hair, weight control and quasi- hormonal assistance for the menopausal (or boner-deficient). Products like “Rock Hard” or “Eternal” ( GN), diverse phyto-estrogens or the antler velvet once shilled by Adams, as well as skin and hair products that seek to re-capture your past glories.

There’s more insidious disdain that I’ve detected in their messaging: women age quicker than men do. The consequences of female aging are de-cried- in great detail- whilst the woo-meister parades photos of his seemingly endless youth ( see GN facebook/ Adams used to pose on HealthRanger.com). As I mentioned, this can be subtle- they don’t want to frighten potential female customers away.

Paternalism embedded in superficiality. Many woo-meisters believe in life energy ( or essence) that bubbles within as a portable fountain of youth- and yes, they can help you to unleash its healing waters.

‘Ladies, if you do what I say and use my products, even you, despite your present decrepitude, can be pleasing to me.
Of course, you can never presume to be on my level but at least you won’t be as miserable and undesirable as you are now following your own devices.’

Events with low probability and events with high probability are equivalent, so long as their probabilities are somewhere between 0 and 1. The losses associated with the events are irrelevant. I’ll call these Ji’s axiom, and the Ranger postulate but which is which I haven’t decided yet. I would not recommend the resulting theory to be used in decision making.

have to remember we’re talking about a) one study and b) the reduction in cancer incidence seen in this study cannot be attributed to the vitamin D and calcium administered rather than other differences between the groups. the subjects were recruited from a rural area of Nebraska by means of random telephone dialing, resulting in a pretty homogenous subject pool (for example, the paper notes that all the subjects were white.) Also, subjects were randomly assigned to treatment groups with no attempt to match subjects across groups with respect to possible confounders (other than estrogen use).

The study has to be considered in the context of all other studies which have found no benefit from increased vitamin D and calcium, as well as the fact that some studies suggest elevated vitamine D levels are associated with an increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

So, promising? Potentially.

Support for conducting more large scale clinical studies, particularly in more diverse subject groups with matching to eliminate potential confounders? Absolutely.

But evidence that supplementary vitiamin C and calcium can prevent or cure cancer, as so many alt med advocates trumpet? Not hardly..

“Randomized clinical trials designed to investigate the effects of vitamin D intake on bone health have suggested that higher vitamin D intakes may reduce the risk of cancer. One study involved nearly 1,200 healthy postmenopausal women who took daily supplements of calcium (1,400 mg or 1,500 mg) and vitamin D (25 μg vitamin D, or 1,100 IU―a relatively large dose) or a placebo for 4 years. The women who took the supplements had a 60 percent lower overall incidence of cancer (6); however, the study did not include a vitamin D-only group. Moreover, the primary outcome of the study was fracture incidence; it was not designed to measure cancer incidence. This limits the ability to draw conclusions about the effect of vitamin D intake on cancer risk.”

Of course it is–in the woo mindset, a single positive result supporting your preferred and predetermined position–no matter how marginal, dubious or otherwise meager–is always sufficient to completely invalid any amount of evidence demonstrating otherwise. They go into the argument already knowing the truth, after all. Hypochlorite isn’t bleach and cures damn near anything if you squirt it up your bum. Antineoplastons aren’t toxic or chemo, Water remembers. Big pharma is hiding the cure for financial gain.MARS WANTS OUR WOMEN!…(uhh, sorry–got carried away for a minute.)

Once you know the truth, theres’s nothing more to be said. “Evidence? We don’t need no steenkin’ evidence!”

JGC said…
“Your question may have been to Orac…
…but surely you realize that instead of dircting it to Orac (via e-mail, for example) you posted it to an open forum.
And you’ve since received a couple of answers to that question. Is there some reason you find those answers unsatisfactory?”
I found lilady’s “answer” unsatisfactory. Your answer was satisfactory, thanks.

lilady said…
“@ Nigel Kinbrum: You really don’t know how blogs *work*, do you?”
Did you get out of bed the wrong side this morning?
“You posed a general question and sophia8 replied. You, in turn, commented back at sophia8 in a snarky manner.”I did not. There was a misunderstanding and I clarified it. Any perceived snark is in your head. What’s your problem with me? Actually, I’m really not interested. Just go away and leave me alone.

You see, dearest Nigel, RI maintains a hierarchical structure somewhat resembling an onion wherein the innermost layer of devoted minions often respond to visitors at will because our esteemed and gracious host is usually otherwise engaged- as a doctor, professor and researcher. He will however, step in when necessary or whenever the whim strikes him.

If I were you, I would tread carefully amongst the guardians of the threshold, lilady being one, for it is unwise to invoke their anger, righteous or otherwise. Be forewarned.

I , myself, am rather like the tourguide pointing the way to Dante Alighieri in his travels. Godspeed.

Gerd Antes offered a good article as well Average Risks of Breast and Ovarian Cancer Associated with BRCA1 or BRCA2 Mutations Detected in Case Series Unselected for Family History: A Combined Analysis of 22 Studies
Antoniou et a.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180265/

Denice Walter said…
“@ Nigel Kinbrum:
You see, dearest Nigel, RI maintains a hierarchical structure somewhat resembling an onion wherein the innermost layer of devoted minions often respond to visitors at will because our esteemed and gracious host is usually otherwise engaged- as a doctor, professor and researcher. He will however, step in when necessary or whenever the whim strikes him.

If I were you, I would tread carefully amongst the guardians of the threshold, lilady being one, for it is unwise to invoke their anger, righteous or otherwise. Be forewarned.

I , myself, am rather like the tourguide pointing the way to Dante Alighieri in his travels. Godspeed.”
Denice, I like your style! I’ve been posting on forums for so long that I soon recognise the “resident sharks” with their “weird filters” and strawman fallacy arguments. I’m not the sort of person who treads carefully.

Dangerous Bacon said…
“By the way, “Nigeepoo”, taking supplemental vitamin D is not a proven way to prevent sunburn and is not an adequate method of protection from getting skin cancer (despite assertions in your blog).

Going for long drives with the top down and broiling gently without sunscreen on a repeated basis is dumb.”
Thank you for actually reading what I wrote before criticising it. You are allowed to leave comments on my blog. If you want to have a discussion about what I wrote there, please do so there, not here.

No significant associations were observed for participants with lower 25(OH)D status. However, a high 25(OH)D concentration (≥100 nmol/L) was associated with a statistically significant 2-fold increase in pancreatic cancer risk overall (odds ratio = 2.12, 95% confidence interval: 1.23, 3.64). Given this result, recommendations to increase vitamin D concentrations in healthy persons for the prevention of cancer should be carefully considered.

Narad said…
“I must say that I find the DDoS story hilarious. How does one perform a SYN flood against a particular Blogspot target, Nigel? The lack of a unique A record seems to pose a bit of a problem here.”
It was against my home computer, you idiot. I thought that that fact was obvious, bearing in mind that I wrote “my downlink speed”. Why are you discussing things that I wrote there, over here?

Okay, I got as far as your clever insertion of “The Name of the Doctor” and just had a total geekout. Don’t tell me you’re one of the lucky few who preordered and consequently already know the secret! And if you do, please, for the love of all that is holy, do not reveal it!!!! The Great Auntie Beeb has promised us an extra Smith and Tennant video if everybody is good and doesn’t reveal it! And I don’t want spoilers before this weekend! And . . . and . . . and . . . .

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIGH! THREE MORE DAYS! THREE MORE DAYS! I AM GOING TO EXPLODE!

Okay. I’m going to go read some Dr Who stuff to calm down, and then I can come back and read this article properly. Maybe. 😉

Narad said…
“It was against my home computer, you idiot.
Show me the logs, Nigel. What is the size of your static CIDR block?”
What part of “If you want to have a discussion about what I wrote there, please do so there, not here.” did you not understand?

Yes, i did read the link you posted. I don’t see how the evidence support’s Vieth’s conclusion sustained vitamin D supplementation to achieve a constant mean circulating concentration of 130 nmol/L–more than 4 times greater than the level seen in by Stolzenberg-Solomon et al to cause a 2-fold increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer–would somehow eliminate or reduce that increase in risk. The only data he presents offers evidence of differential risk not associated with circulating vitamin D level, or even really with differential UV exposure, but with living in different geographic regions. Can you say “condounders”, boys and girls? I thought you could…

Yes, i did read the link you posted. I don’t see how the evidence support’s Vieth’s conclusion sustained vitamin D supplementation to achieve a constant mean circulating concentration of 130 nmol/L–more than 4 times greater than the level seen in by Stolzenberg-Solomon et al to cause a 2-fold increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer–would somehow eliminate or reduce that increase in risk. The only data he presents offers evidence of differential risk not associated with circulating vitamin D level, or even really with differential UV exposure, but with living in different geographic regions. Can you say “condounders”, boys and girls? I thought you could…

JGC said…
“Yes, i did read the link you posted. I don’t see how the evidence support’s Vieth’s conclusion sustained vitamin D supplementation to achieve a constant mean circulating concentration of 130 nmol/L…”
It’s the variation in 25(OH)D level that’s the problem. Taking huge, intermittent doses of Vit D is bad, even if the mean 25(OH)D level is O.K. Why do some studies give huge, intermittent doses of Vitamin D to subjects? No study gives a month’s-worth of “X” to subjects in one go, unless “X” happens to be Vitamin D.

Orac said…
“Nigel seems…familiar to me. Methinks an old troll might have returned.”
Orac, I haven’t commented on here before (to the best of my knowledge). Any similarity to an old troll is purely coincidental.

This is your blog. Am I not allowed to defend myself against “resident sharks” who aren’t you?

Anyway, I asked a question about Joan M Lappe’s study on post-menopausal women. Now that I have your attention, would you like to comment on it?

So do I conclude her response wasn’t unsatisfactory but you’re discounting it anyway, that it was unsatisfactory but ‘just because’, or that it was unsatisfactory and you don’t even know why yourself? Decisions, decisions…

Narad said…
“Hey, you popped in here. It seems entirely fair to take a look at your reasoning skills.”
From what I’ve seen so far, your reading comprehension skills suck. I will only discuss things that I wrote on my blog, on my blog, not on here. /discussion

Vieth offers no data demonstrating that variation in 25(OH)D level is a problem , however, does he? he simply assumes it is, despite teh fact that what he’s actually following are differences in risk ratio between groups living in different geographic locations.

JGC said…
“Nigel @ #35
“So do I conclude her response wasn’t unsatisfactory but you’re discounting it anyway, that it was unsatisfactory but ‘just because’, or that it was unsatisfactory and you don’t even know why yourself? Decisions, decisions…”
No comment. I’m awaiting a response from you about the effect of excessive fluctuations in serum 25(OH)D level on the RR for pancreatic cancer.

JGC said…
“Vieth offers no data demonstrating that variation in 25(OH)D level is a problem , however, does he? he simply assumes it is, despite teh fact that what he’s actually following are differences in risk ratio between groups living in different geographic locations.”
Excessive variation in serum 25(OH)D level due to the giving of huge, intermittent doses of Vitamin D is a plausible explanation.
“A homeopathic dose of vitamin C would be 0 iu/day, wouldn’t it?”
I see your “sense of humour” bypass operation was a total success.

JGC said…
“Can you cite a paper, then, offering data supporting the premise excessive fluctuations in serum 25(OH)D level impact the RR for pancreatic cancer which I could consider?
As I’ve pointed out a couple times now, neither the blog you provided a link to or the actual Vieth paper the blog cites do so.”
No. It’s a plausible explanation, that’s all. You still haven’t answered my question as to why the people that run studies feel the need to give a month’s-worth (or 3, or 6, or even 12) of Vitamin D to subjects in one go. Try that with insulin and let me know how you get on.

Okay, I’m back, I’m calmed down, and I’ve read the rest of this article now. But there seems to be a rather peculiar fight going on in the comments that has little to do with the article, so I’m going to go back to reading speculation about who Clara Oswin Oswald actually is……

i just did answer the question: if doen it would be to acheive a specified circulating level within the time-frame of observations.

But I haven’t offered any studies where this was doen, have I? The study I linked to, which found a 2-fold increased risk of pancreatic cancer assoicated with circulating Vitamin D levels greater than 25nmol/L was a case control study which measured circulating levels without administering supplemental vitamin D (whether a day’s worth or a month’s worth or whatever).

This idea that you can prevent cancer (and when I see the word prevent, I know there’s a quack around) with diet/lifestyle/prayer/fill in the blank-is that it blames the victim. Back in the days when I volunteered at a women’s crisis center, rule #1 (after making sure everyone is safe) was to never Blame the Victim.
And these quacks violate rule #1.

@JGC: You’re being intellectually-dishonest. You know damn well what I mean when I write “You still haven’t answered my question as to why the people that run studies feel the need to give a month’s-worth (or 3, or 6, or even 12) of Vitamin D to subjects in one go. Try that with insulin and let me know how you get on.”
I don’t continue discussions with intellectually-dishonest people. Goodbye.
P.S. Vitamin D has a half-life in the body of ~60 days. Therefore, dosing shouldn’t be less frequent than 1 dose every 30 days maximum.

“There is no chance involved in whether you get cancer. It’s all cause and effect.”

Am I a terrible person for hope that Mike Adams gets cancer after reading that? Because after I read that my first thought was “god I hope that man get’s riddled with cancer.” It’s a good thing I am not narcissistic enough to think that my thoughts have any effects on the world or else I’d be feeling very guilty right now (currently I am only a little guilty).

I’m not being dishonest, intellectually or otherwise: I answered your irrelevant question (irrelevant because the evidence for an increased risk of pancreatic cancer did not involve studies invovling supplemental vitamin D at any concentration) to the best of my ability.

1,25(OH)D is the biologically active form of vitamin D, circulating 1,25(OH)D has a plasma half life 4-6 hours. Also, it’s circulating levels are a thousand fold less than 25(OH)D, 25(OH)D which has a half-life of ~15 days (not 60) and that plus the longer half-life is why25(OH)D levels are measured when evaluating overall exposure level clinically. (Holick MF: Vitamin D status: measurement, interpretation, and clinical application. Ann Epidemiol 2009, 19:73-78)

Bottom line? If you dose every 30 days, you’re never going to achieve a steady-state circulating concentration.

As an exercise, you might want to model how dosing a compound that did have a 60 day half-life every 30 days would play out–you still won’t acheive a ‘non fluctuating’ level such as you seem to feel is so important for months.

The new reference values are based on much more information and higher-quality studies than were available when the values for these nutrients were first set in 1997. The committee assessed more than one thousand studies and
reports and listened to testimony from scientists and stakeholders before making its conclusions. It reviewed a range of health outcomes, including but not limited to cancer, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, diabetes and met
-bolic syndrome, falls, immune response, neuro-psychological functioning, physical performance, preeclampsia, and reproductive outcomes. This thorough review found that information about the health benefits beyond bone health—benefits often reported in the media—were from studies that provided often mixed and inconclusive results and could not be considered reliable. However, a strong body of evidence from rigorous testing substantiates the importance of vitamin D
and calcium in promoting bone health…”

I seem to recall that Orac blogged about the IOM Report regarding Vitamin D/Calcium supplements for cancer treatments…

“….Finally, Martinez et al take on the case of vitamin D and calcium. Anyone who’s been reading CAM-friendly websites these days probably knows that vitamin D is currently viewed by many in the alternative medicine world as some sort of panacea that prevents all cancer. Heck, to listen to some CAM advocates tell it, vitamin D is supposedly so awesome that it prevents influenza more effectively than the influenza vaccine. Of course, as has been pointed out before, the picture is, as is usually the case, more complicated than that, and Martinez et al try to communicate that complexity, referencing the Institute of Medicine’s recent recommendations for vitamin D and calcium intake published in 2011, in which the IOM concluded that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there is a causal association between low vitamin D intake or low blood 25 hydroxy (OH) vitamin D [25(OH)D] levels and cancer. Martinez et al sum up this data thusly:”

“There have been many epidemiological investigations of blood 25 hydroxy (OH) vitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations and cancer-related endpoints (45-49), and meta-analyses of these have shown statistically significant inverse associations between serum 25(OH)D and colorectal adenoma (46,49) and colorectal cancer (45), whereas the results for prostate cancer have largely been null (45,48). For breast cancer, the relationship with serum 25(OH)D levels varies by study design; case-control studies generally demonstrate inverse associations, and prospective studies have been null (45,47,50); because blood levels are collected after the onset of cancer in case-control studies, the potential for bias in these studies must be considered (47,50). Clearly, clinical trials are needed to elucidate any preventive effect of vitamin D (51,52). To date, three short-term RCTs of vitamin D and cancer endpoints (52-55) have been completed; one showed no direct effect of vitamin D supplementation on cancer mortality (53), the second showed no reduction in breast or colorectal cancer incidence by a vitamin D/calcium combination (54,55), and the third showed a reduction in total cancer incidence by a calcium/vitamin D combination vs placebo (56). As concluded in a recent meta-analysis, because of the potential confounding inherent in observational studies and the limited data from clinical trials, evidence is currently insufficient to draw conclusions about the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation for cancer prevention (57).”

At the risk of giving the scumbag’s website even more exposure, Mikey Adams has just posted the third installment of his Angelina Jolie trilogy “exposing” the conspiracy and outlining who will benefit financially from her decision.

He uses the new issue of People magazine as part of his evidence that this was all planned in advance, stating the magazine’s cover is determined three weeks in advance. I guess he’s never seen the issues that appear a couple of days after a major celebrity’s death, or big news (Tom Cruise divorce, for example). Yes, under usual circumstances they might loosely plan their covers a couple of weeks in advance but can deviate from the plan when news breaks.

Well, for a first visit, it’s been interesting! Here is my analysis of various posters that I’ve engaged with:-

sophia8: O.K.
Denice Walter: O.K.
lilady: Starts fights based on imagined snark. Is either insane, or a troll.
JGC: Tries hard to be “clever”, but fails miserably. Does not give a straight answer to a straight question. Intellectually-dishonest, or a troll.
Narad: Has reading comprehension issues. Thick, or a troll.
Dangerous Bacon: Enjoys straw-men fallacies but O.K.
Orac: Doesn’t discourage trolling on his/her blog. When newbie arrives, is set upon by trolls and defends himself robustly, blog owner accuses newbie of being a possible troll.

Conclusion: I’m not wasting any more time commenting on here. If anyone disagrees with anything on my blog, leave a comment on my blog. Good night!

I responded to the question about administering large boluses of vitamin D, and I responded to the suggestion that excessive fluctuation in circulating vitamin D levels somehow engenders an increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Did you post a third question I’ve somehow missed?

I am interested in the above comment and have never heard that in either medical or holistic therapy circles please can you explain and tell me where you get your info from as it is a component of cruciferous vegetables your comment is very confusing and I would be interested to research if further if you can explain.

Honestly I was just trying to read all your comments. You lot are incorrigible! This is so not helping anyone. After watching my mum die of cancer 3 years ago I have been extremely keen to take the knowledge I have learnt and HELP people. We need collaboration not competition. We need communication not criticism. We can ‘t engage in this kind of petty discourse and expect that we are really making a difference to people like my mum. In the end it’s love and compassion that makes the biggest difference to people, i wish my mum was still here so you could ask her. When she cried and held my hand and said “The doctors gave up on me” I looked her in the eye and said “That may be true I don’t know ( seemed pretty obvious they had but anyway!) but I will never give up on you” I didn’t and she told me frequently what a difference that made to her. Please post something of value in the comments this is just ridiculous!

Lisa, first time commenters have their initial posts held until the moderator releases them. It helps reduce slamming and sockpuppetry. After that first post is released most other posts won’t go to moderation before appearing although some things can trigger jolting in moderation no matter how long yu’ve been participating here ( like including more than two
hyperlinks in a post)

That said I don’t agree that providing accurate evidence based information isn’t helping snyoue

Huh? you lost me ….. I totally agree that providing accurate evidence based information is helping people and I never said it wasn’t. If you look at my comment it was about the comments that ensued from your article that I scrolled through in disbelief – it hardly even made sense. You have totally miscontrued my comment.

The ONLY way I was even able to help my mum when she left hospital and get her eating again and feeling a little was through research and I did a lot of that on many diffferent things. Medicine, nutrition, chemo, herbs.

i asked for more information on your statement about IC3 – if thats a problem let me know. I will ask elsewhere.

Orac then points out that I3C actually upregulates the expression of the tumour-suppressing BRCA,, and links to a comment by Krebiozen who explains that people like Ms Jolie are at risk because their BRCA gene is mutated. It can’t produce tumour suppressing factor, so it doesn’t matter how much BRCA expression you induce, it’s useless if yours is broken. It’s like sending a horde of paper firemen to put out a blaze.

Does that help?

Orac doesn’t have time to do real life Q&A. He’s a cancer surgeon and researcher, with a family, and has very little free time. That’s why the regulars try to keep trolls under control.

It’s also why moderated first comments take a while to be released, as Orac doesn’t exactly have time to trawl the spam bin regularly. The absolute worst thing you can do, in terms of being moderated, is to unleash a flood of paranoid comments, as that’s precisely what the filter’s designed to detect!

Finally, we’re all insolent here, none of us take alt-med crap seriously because it kills. That’s why idiots like Nigel are given short shrift. This is a science blog, not a platform for sCAM-promoting trolls.

Nigel, if you’re still reading this – being polite to a newcomer does not make me your BFF.

Lisa – I agree with you that love and compassion make a tremendous difference to a patient’s emotional state and well-being. But unfortunately it doesn’t cure cancer; if it did, no children would ever die. I am sorry for your loss and wish you the best in getting through your grief.

Oh and Calli – Other Mrs elburto is super-devastated that she’s at work tomorrow night. We saw a great theory about Clara, it involves the events of The Parting of the Ways. I’ll be thrilled if it’s true.

Ok well I was trying to find out some REAL information that can help people in the future like my mum as I was the only one who offered her any real assistance anyway and even the doctors AND the oncologist were asking me what I was doing and said to me ” keep doing it becaiuse its helping.”.

I can’t deal with the arrogance of science when its actually causing people like my mum serious pain and I had to watch her go from 14 stone to about 6 in under six months suffering blood clots and edema and absolutely NO immunity. What I was trying to figure out ALONE ( because of this kind of marlarky where there is little to no communication) was if I DO use supplements and nutrition in conjunction with the pharmaceutical medicine she was given – what was working WITH and what was working AGAINST or rather PROMOTING the cancer in some way. E g betacarotene in whole foods is said to be a great preventative for cancer however taken in large doses in health supplements may NOT be beneficial to someone in chemo and hence my question on the IC3 – I did a fair bit of research on that as I took it myself for severe oestrogen dominance and it worked quite well so I was genuinely interested in what was being said here.

I have NEVER had a doctor or indeed anyone in the medical profession make any difference to my life, except recently when I had a miscarriage the doctor I saw was really nice to me and followed me up. A lot of things did not make sense when my mum was being treated and I tried very hard to communicate even when she missed out on PDT which was in the same freakin hospital and our oncoologist didn’t even KNOW about the treatment . anyway i could tell you lots of horror stories however I am still open to having the conversation and being interested in what is going on for both sides of the coin, in order that we can really HELP people.
and sophia you actually don’t know the power of what love and compassion does and unfortunately no one her has the cure cancer; maybe some people including kids are just meant to die when they are meant to die and I often told myself that when my mum was dying . it didn’t feel fair – she didn’t see me get married and won’t see me have kids but it is what it is.

anyway seeing as you have no interest in having a conversation with someone like me who is passionate and loving and smart and wants to acutally help people and you are all way more interested in being RIGHT. This CAM-promoting troll is going somewhere else to find out what I need to actually make a difference in this world.

Good luck with your stats and theorising and I sincerely hope that one day its all worth it and actually helps someone.

All that really matters at the end of the day when you die is that you loved and were loved – believe me when you are all on your death beds you will realise that much.

I know that I said that I wouldn’t leave any more comments, but…
sophia8 said…
“Nigel, if you’re still reading this – being polite to a newcomer does not make me your BFF.”
I was merely acknowledging your politeness. I wasn’t proposing marriage! Why is everyone so touchy on here?

elburto said…
“I loved his assertion that a compound with a sixty day half-life only needs to be given every thirty days. That’s fantastic. I mean, thirty is half of sixty, right? Seems logical!
*laughgasm*”
I made no such assertion. I see that your reading comprehension is as bad as Narad’s. I take 5,000iu Vitamin D gel-caps daily. You would have known this had you read my blog, but you are intellectually-lazy.
I clearly stated above that it’s the people who run the studies who specify large, intermittent doses of Vitamin D, not me. Other studies specify doses of 400iu/day. That’s great for bone health, but useless for anything else, including reducing the RR for all cancers. That’s why Martinez et al found little benefit to Vitamin D supplementation. More studies like Lappe et al are needed. Does anyone disagree?

In my first post, I asked Orac (and everyone else, I gather!) for their opinion on the Lappe et al study. I got a couple of good replies. Sadly, the rest were useless, so I’m out of here.

Lisa – I mean this in the nicest way possible, have you thought about having any form of grief counselling?

My other half lost her mam to a particularly horrific form of cancer that is so stealthy at first, then so fast that by the time you notice it there are metastases everywhere. This was further complicated by the sheer terrible twist of also developing lung cancer at the same time, a separate, discrete tumour growing simultaneously with the other.

And, while the radiotherapy and chemo bought some time, ultimately she died at only 61.

The reason I ask about counselling, or any other type of therapy, is because you sound painfully like my beloved did. She was so angry, torn in half down the centre, grieving and lashing out. The mere mention of ‘cancer’, ‘hospital’, ‘NHS’ etc. would trigger angry tears and depressive states. She’d become paralysed by grief on various dates like her mam’s birthday, the date she was diagnosed, the various dates she was hospitalised. The whole month of August (when she’d died) was spent alternating between catatonic grief, and raging through sobs about how doctors had killed her mam.

It took five years for her to see any rhyme or reason in the events. She eventually realised that this particular form of cancer is just not something medicine can compete with yet, and that the situation was compounded by the development of lung cancer. After the radiotherapy and chemotherapy had failed to stop further progression, the oncologist told my partner and her parents that there was no further treatment available, and that in the event of a collapse no heroic measures would be taken.

They interpreted that as the doctor not caring, of saying that she wasn’t worth saving. My partner and her dad (who was grieving in the same way as her, angry) always went back to this one event to illustrate how heartless that doctor was.

I asked her one day, if extra time with her mam would have been any good, given the state she was in. She had to be carried everywhere, the tumour was blocking her throat and impinging on the upper part of her airway, so she was slowly starving, and had difficulty breathing. The tumour in the lower part of her lung was worsening the breathing difficulty, and causing fluid buildup.

Her (already weak) heart was struggling badly as it tried desperately to supply enough oxygenated blood everywhere, and the mets in her spine were so agonising that the Diamorphine did very little except make her hallucinate and black out.

So, would the effects of any extra chemo and radiotherapy, added to all I’ve mentioned above, be worth an extra month or two? Her answer was quick and it was simple, “Not worth even another minute”.

The doctors hadn’t given up on her, they just knew she deserved as dignified a life as possible while there was any left.
They wanted to spare her from more intensive but pointless treatments, to let her go as quickly and quietly as she was able, instead of months in hospital.

She got to stay in her home, she had help from Macmillan nurses and the district nurse team, and got to sleep next to the man she loved. When the time came they’d taken her to hospital, and she died surrounded by her family.

Nobody deserves that sort of death, but doctors are only human, they can only do so much. There are hundreds of types of cancer, some can be virtually universally cured, others are just too devastatingly good at what they do, but somewhere each one is being researched, analysed, by people like Orac. There is hope in science. Supplements and the like do not offer anything more than an attractive fiction, I’m afraid. CAM-peddlers prey on the bereaved, make them feel guilty, tell them that they could/ban stop cancer if only they use the right supplements, if they remain positive. It’s all lies, and it’s incredibly harmful, psychologically, to people who end up thinking “If only I’d tried Rife, or vitamin megadosing”.

I don’t even know you, and it’s deeply upsetting to see the grief that’s teeming out of you. Grief that is only worsened by your miscarriage, by all of the “What if”s.

I hate seeing anyone so hurt, as devastated as you are. You really seem as if you could use some help working through it alt so that maybe, one day, the anger and raw pain can fade, and you can remember your mum with love, smile at all of the great memories, and be glad that you had her go your life for as long as you did. You could ask your GP or local Macmillan group if they can recommend any support groups or bereavement specialists.

In the meantime, please remember that it wasn’t your fault, there wasn’t anything you could have done, any supplement you could have given, that would have halted the progression of her illness, ok? Your love and support was the best thing you gave.

al kimeea
Im so glad to hear that. When my mum said yes to surgery which they then reneged and said 2 blasts of chemo believe me when i say I wanted it to work soooo bad

I knew if it was me i wouldn’ t have it and i said to mum its your choice – listen to what you doctor says and she did and god how I cry now thinking of how much she trusted him. looking back it was all a bit of shoot and hope but I am so glad that as disgusting as it was to watch her puking and coughing stinking , unable to go to the bathroom and evetually near fatal blood clots in both legs and to have to do everything for her including fishing out faeces that got stuck . all the while witht the doctors doing nothing to help me and evntually giving up on her. my only regret is not getting her onto the herbs and nutrition quicker – at least i got her eating 3 meals a day again when the hosptial couldn’t. my only wish is that i can help someone else one day.

I am glad it worked for you truly. i am

i guess I wouln’t even have any options to have both lungs out if I have some genetic predisposition so my only hope si that someone would have the same compassion and love for me if the tables were turned.

Its really ok. I came on here thinking I would get info but really its more for people to jibe at one antother. i am looking for people that want to collaborate not kill hope

Really funny that you see my comments as being so angry and lashing out when they are nowhere near as bitter and angry as the other comments on this blog.

just upsets me to see people on here so uninterested in acttually making a difference. My mum had years of abuse and then sorrow at leaving the kids from her first marriage. I am sad that she died and also that I couldn’t help more than i did but I know i did all i could . I just wish if anything she had died sooner so she didn’t go though so much pain

Nigeepoodles- Please stick the flounce this time, ok? Oh and I am reading impaired actually, optic neuropathy sucks like that, but TTS technology helps me to keep on snarking. You’d be amazed at what I can do with one thumb and a smartphone. So yeah, thanks for noticing my visual impairment. I’m now aurally impaired after hearing your self-centered whining in half the comments on this post. I now have a gag response to the word ‘Nigel’.

Protip for your future adventures on the intertubes – blogs comment sections are communal. There are specific cultures and conventions that develop. There are regular posters, resident experts, in-jokes, and certain boundaries.

Would you walk into a real life space, let’s say a gathering of local atheists, and say “Hey guys, whaddya think about Jesus? I hear he’s great. I want Richard Dawkins to answer a question I have so I’ll wait here for him”?

Would you then answer anyone who isn’t Dawkinswith “Shut up thicko” or “Wow, you’re stupid. I don’t care what you think”. Would you then repeatedly ignore any women present, imply that they’re too moody and touchy for you to deal with, and then keep braying “I WANT RICHARD DAWKINS TO ANSWER MY JESUS QUESTION! YOU IDIOTS!”?

That’s pretty much what you’re doing here. Trolling, and then getting arsey when you stomp all over everyone’s toes and they have the temerity to call you out for it.

Rather than lurking, observing the flow and rhythms, and picking up on certain themes, you just dived in and demanded answers of someone who was long gone off to work, and snarling at anyone who wasn’t him, throwing around insults, and generally being a boorish little sh¡tlord.

Want to ask Orac something? Search the blog history and see if it’s been covered. If it has, read it. If it hasn’t, email Orac and ask him. Don’t just storm into the comments and act as if you own the place, and then throw around pathetic little taunts when yet’re not immediately adored.

Lisa – I’m sorry, but herbs and supplements don’t help. This is scienceblogs, there’s never going to be a time here when the general opinion switches to “Use supplements to beat your cancer, chemo is useless”.

Cancer is not one disease, it’s hundreds. You cannot cure, palliate, or prevent any of them with alternative “medicine”. We spend a great deal of time here battling against the sick purveyors of cancer “treatments” that are a guaranteed route to a death sentence and bankruptcy all at once. Burzynski, Robert O Young, Gerson and co., who sell nothing but lies and false hope.

There’s not a person here who’s never been touched by cancer, even Orac has lost loved ones to it. There are people here who have suffered terribly tragic losses, who are bedridden, or who are caring for severely disabled children. There are scientists, doctors, nurses, lay people, and trust me – nobody here wants people to suffer from illness or disease. There are people here who are actively out there, working in fields that will one day impove all of our lives. There are people involved in hands-on care, or activism designed to root out and expose quackery.

You are not the only one to know loss and pain, to grieve for what might have been, to replay decisions over and over in your mind. You’re not the only person who’s sat by a bedside feeling utterly useless and desperate, willing your loved one to live longer at exactly the same time as wishing they’d stop fighting, end the pain.

You’re clearly not yet in the right place to accept help and start the recovery process. You’re not ready to let the fog of grief lift so that you can see clearly again.

You’re taking everything personally, even words meant for others, and you’re fixated on the idea that you could have saved your mother if only you’d given her the right herb or vitamin. You couldn’t have, I’m sorry, but the quicker you let go of that particular idea, the quicker you’ll recover. Decrying all science while placing the burden of cure on yourself is a route to nowhere but downhill. You need to accept that there was nothing you could have done, and move on. It wasn’t your fault, and the toxic sCAM artists who seem to have convinced you otherwise, are wrong, they’re sick fraudsters.

I just hope this isn’t spilling over into your offline life, that would be beyond tragic.

Let the lies go, start to live again. Would your mother really want you to torture yourself like this?

Like I said its been 3 years I am not in a fog of grief nor do I need help. I came on here for information

I am quite happy with my life and do not feel I am being scammed and am s happy with all I did for my mum as she told me herself too every day of her life. No regrets. I have studied many different therapies over 15 years. I have made a difference in many people’s lives and will continue to so you don’t need to judge me personally. I am not doing that to you. I am judging my own experience.

I asked a question you gave me an answer, you didn’t
Need to make it personal and make out like I am in a crazy fog of grief. No one in my life has ever said that to me so I’m pretty sure I will be a ok . I will always have grief at losing my mum for sure.

I actually came on here as it was recommended over on another blog obviously from one of your people who was jibing on a natural therapists blog. I naturally assumed it was an open forum and came on here to find out some science/ the other side to the celebrity hoo has over lopping off body parts to avoid cancer.

Like I said its been 3 years I am not in a fog of grief nor do I need help. I came on here for information

I am quite happy with my life and do not feel I am being scammed and am s happy with all I did for my mum as she told me herself too every day of her life. No regrets. I have studied many different therapies over 15 years. I have made a difference in many people’s lives and will continue to so you don’t need to judge me personally. I am not doing that to you. I am judging my own experience.

I asked a question you gave me an answer, you didn’t
Need to make it personal and make out like I am in a crazy fog of grief. No one in my life has ever said that to me so I’m pretty sure I will be a ok . I will always have grief at losing my mum for sure.

I actually came on here as it was recommended over on another blog obviously from one of your people who was jibing on a natural therapists blog. I naturally assumed it was an open forum and came on here to find out some science/ the other side to the celebrity hoo has over lopping off body parts to avoid cancer.

An possible unintended consequence of Ms Jolie’s action is that a friend’s niece is considering the same procedure even before her genetic testing is complete.

A little history: Her mom has ovarian cancer and another relative has had breast cancer. The niece recently found and had a lump tested and stage 0 (is that even a valid stage?) cancer was found. The early stage result was a relief at first and she went for the genetic test. But she seems to be rushing to have both breasts removed even before those results are in coincident with Jolie’s announcement.

Lisa — I’m sorry for the response you got. I do not know what provoked it; there seems to have been a lot of knee-jerking in this thread. It’s why I decided to go back to reading about the mysterious Clara Oswald. (Doctor Who thing. We get the season finale tomorrow!) There is a very uncharacteristic level of anger in this thread.

Elburto — you mean the theory that Clara is child of Rose and the Metacrisis Doctor? I’ve heard that too, but I dunno; it just doesn’t seem right to me. We’ll soon see what the Moff has in store for us. 😉

If you’ll recall, Nigel, Lappe’s study was principally designed to look at the effects of vitamin D (with and without supplementary calcium) on bone health, with fracture incidence as the primary routcome and cancer incidence a secondary outcome.

What’s needed are studies designed specifically to examine vitamin D effects with cancer incidence as the primary outcome.

I clearly stated above that it’s the people who run the studies who specify large, intermittent doses of Vitamin D, not me. Other studies specify doses of 400iu/day. That’s great for bone health, but useless for anything else, including reducing the RR for all cancers. That’s why Martinez et al found little benefit to Vitamin D supplementation.

And your evidence that if dosed other than as large intermitent boluses supplemental vitamin D reduces the RR for cancers would be…?

I mean, I get this is what you beleive, but surely there’s some a reason why you beleive it–some rational reason why you’ve assigned Martin’s failure to find a benefit to the dosing schedule employed,rather than being simply due to supplemental vitamin being effective at reducing RR.

Oh, crap! I thought that I was done here. *sigh*
elburto mumbled…
“Nigeepoodles- Please stick the flounce this time, ok? Oh and I am reading impaired actually, optic neuropathy sucks like that, but TTS technology helps me to keep on snarking. You’d be amazed at what I can do with one thumb and a smartphone. So yeah, thanks for noticing my visual impairment.”
I wrote “I see that your reading comprehension is as bad as Narad’s.” There was no mention of visual impairment. But thank you for confirming what I originally wrote!

“Protip for your future adventures on the intertubes – blogs comment sections are communal. There are specific cultures and conventions that develop. There are regular posters, resident experts, in-jokes, and certain boundaries.”
No sh*t, Sherlock?!

“Would you walk into a real life space, let’s say a gathering of local atheists, and say “Hey guys, whaddya think about Jesus? I hear he’s great. I want Richard Dawkins to answer a question I have so I’ll wait here for him”?”
Nice Strawman fallacy you created, there.

“Would you then answer anyone who isn’t Dawkinswith “Shut up thicko” or “Wow, you’re stupid. I don’t care what you think”. Would you then repeatedly ignore any women present, imply that they’re too moody and touchy for you to deal with, and then keep braying “I WANT RICHARD DAWKINS TO ANSWER MY JESUS QUESTION! YOU IDIOTS!”?”
See preceding comment.

“That’s pretty much what you’re doing here. Trolling, and then getting arsey when you stomp all over everyone’s toes and they have the temerity to call you out for it.”
No, I’m not. I asked a valid question about a Randomised Controlled Trial by Joan M Lappe et al (not the slightest bit alt-med, by the way!) and got a torrent of abuse from the “in-crowd” who have appointed themselves as the official internet police force on here.

“Rather than lurking, observing the flow and rhythms, and picking up on certain themes, you just dived in and demanded answers of someone who was long gone off to work, and snarling at anyone who wasn’t him, throwing around insults, and generally being a boorish little sh¡tlord.”
I made no demands, you snivelling piece of toss.

“Want to ask Orac something? Search the blog history and see if it’s been covered. If it has, read it. If it hasn’t, email Orac and ask him. Don’t just storm into the comments and act as if you own the place, and then throw around pathetic little taunts when yet’re not immediately adored.”
I did searches. I said so, above. Try reading before commenting. They all came up blank. You really are a total moron, elburto.

“Muppet.”
You most certainly are!

“Oh, one last thing – formatting is your friend. Lrn2quote.”
I have quoted the original text in every reply that I have ever made on here. Keep making a total fool of yourself. You don’t need any help from me.

you actually don’t know the power of what love and compassion does and unfortunately no one her has the cure cancer; maybe some people including kids are just meant to die when they are meant to die

Perhaps we don’t know what the power of love and compassion can do, but we do know what it can’t do–and unfortunately one of the things it can’t do is cure cancer.

As for ‘just meant to die when they are meant to die’, meant by whom, exactly, and by what mechanism does this agency realize its intention causing them to die on schedule, as planned, even in teh face of medical intervention (or for that matter by love and compassion)?

We all want cures for cancer and other diseases. We all want to reduce or eliminate suffering, our own, that of our our loved ones, that of complete strangers. I would be ecstatic–I think all of us here would–if love truly were all you need, if supplementary herbs/vitamins/whatever cured or prevented cancer, or if what I now view as the worst of the worst quack therapies–black salve, antineoplastons, coffee enema’s, chelation therapies, etc.–could actually be demonstrated to work safely and effectively.

But there is at this time absolutely no evidence this is the case, a lot of evidence to the contrary, and it’s irresponsible to pretend otherwise and fail to state that is the case–clearly and if necessary reptitively–in the face of claims to the contrary..

But good luck with the whole ‘GFY’ thing–I hope you it works for you on some level. Just be aware that it doesn’t support of your claims nor undermine my criticisms of those claims in any way.

In fact, I pretty much have to take your post @ 112 as an explicit admission you’re aware of no evidence demonstrating when dosed other than as large intermittent boluses vitamin D reduces the RR of cancer.

Oh, Nigel. Don’t hurry back. I actually find you quite boring. I don’t feel humiliated or embarrassed or anything else from your postings. When you have actual information that’s interesting to read, I’ll check it out.

@Lisa Tristram: I’m glad that you feel you were able to help your mom. Believe me, doctors don’t like feeling helpless, and try to do all they can to save lives. If what you did helped your mom feel better until her death, than accept that as a benefit. You do rather come across as still grieving. I don’t blame you for that. But please understand that many of us here have gone through the same experience.

I’m not anti- anything. However, I only want to use things that work and can be SHOWN to work, time and time again. For me, for my family, for my patients. Insurance companies would love less expensive treatments. In the USA, if something would be proven to work and is less expensive than conventional treatment, they would be all over it. I am on several committees that review such things. If there is enough proven literature to support a treatment, we will pay for it. But insurance companies won’t and can’t pay for anecdotal stories. It’s way too expensive. Encourage research and proof, and they WILL pay for it.

MI Dawn rambled…
“Oh, Nigel. Don’t hurry back. I actually find you quite boring. I don’t feel humiliated or embarrassed or anything else from your postings. When you have actual information that’s interesting to read, I’ll check it out.”
The feeling’s mutual, dear! I’ve debated with some really sharp cookies. You lot are like cookies that have been left out on a plate in a sauna for an hour. Your minds are like steel traps – that got wet and rusted shut. You couldn’t argue your way out of a soggy paper bag and you wouldn’t know a Logical Fallacy if you fell over it in the street.

I will come back as & when I choose, unless I get banned by Orac. I’ve seen “echo chamber” blog comment sections before, ruled by jumped-up little know-it-alls who think that they rule the roost. Well, I have very sharp claws & teeth, metaphorically-speaking and I’m not afraid to use ’em!

I posted a link to an RCT. If you can’t be bothered to read the information in the link, that’s your problem, not mine.

JGC blustered…
“it isn’t more studies like Lappe’s that are needed, actually
If you’ll recall, Nigel, Lappe’s study was principally designed to look at the effects of vitamin D (with and without supplementary calcium) on bone health, with fracture incidence as the primary routcome and cancer incidence a secondary outcome.”
Oh, well. I guess that completely invalidates Lappe’s results. The preceding sentence was irony, by the way.

Lisa: “Its really ok. I came on here thinking I would get info but really its more for people to jibe at one antother. i am looking for people that want to collaborate not kill hope”

Ignore the people “jibing” at one another – this happens on any forum and you can skip over these posts.
If you want info, read Orac’s posts and read the comments that aren’t “jibing” – there are lots of them. And maybe you can explain just what you mean by “collaborate”? I thought that was what we’re basically doing on here, namely collaborating and sharing information.
Finally, don’t be so quick to deny that you might still be working through grief. Having gone through the pain of losing a loved one, I can assure you that three years is nothing in the grief process – try thirty years.

I’ve never claimed the study design invalidated Lappe’s results, or that the results weren’t accurately reported. I have instead noted that are reasons why the reduction in cancer incidence observed in the study cannot be attributed to vitamin D and calcium supplementation (see my early post @ #18) rather than other differences between subject groups, and also that the import of this single study must be considered in the larger context of all other studies some of which find circulating vitamin D levels above 25nmol/L to increase RR for some cancers. For these reasons lappe’s paper while intriguing doesn’t represent compelling support for the common alt med claim supplementary vitamin D prevents or cures cancers.

If we’re looking to accurately assess the effect of circulating vitamin D levels on RR for cancer you’re wrong to call for more studies like Lappe’s: what’s needed are better studies than Lappe’s, with cancer incidence as the primary readout, looking at more diverse subject pools, with care taken to match the individuals assigned to groups to reduce potential confounding factors. etc.

I suspect, however, that by “More studies like Lappe et al’s” you didn’t mean studies which would yield an accurate assessment of vitamin D’s effect (or lack there-of) on RR for cancers, but instead for studies that can be interpreted to confirm your preferred conclusion that vitamin D does reduce risk.

JGC said…
“I suspect, however, that by “More studies like Lappe et al’s” you didn’t mean studies which would yield an accurate assessment of vitamin D’s effect (or lack there-of) on RR for cancers, but instead for studies that can be interpreted to confirm your preferred conclusion that vitamin D does reduce risk.”
You suspect wrong. Will better studies be done?
“For these reasons lappe’s paper while intriguing doesn’t represent compelling support for the common alt med claim supplementary vitamin D prevents or cures cancers.”
I’m not alt-med. I never have been. I never will be. I practice evidence-based supplementation. Unfortunately, there is good evidence and there is bad evidence. Trial methodology can be tweaked and statistics can be abused to achieve a desired outcome.
“studies some of which find circulating vitamin D levels above 25nmol/L to increase RR for some cancers.”
The increased RR for some cancers with high Vit D intakes has already been discussed. There are no studies to support the “fluctuation” theory. I’ll stop complaining, when studies stop using 400iu/day, or 400,000iu once a month, or worse. I take 5,000iu of Vitamin D3/day and will continue to do so. If you want to know why, read my blog. That’s what it’s there for.
“(see my early post @ #18) But evidence that supplementary vitiamin C and calcium can prevent or cure cancer, as so many alt med advocates trumpet? Not hardly..”
I never made such a claim. I merely asked for opinions on the study. What is it with all the straw-men on here?

Finally:-
Do not ask me questions on here that are already answered in my blog.

Do not query things that are on my blog on this blog. I welcome comments on my blog, as I learn from them.

I’m not here to cause trouble, but I will not tolerate shoddy debating techniques. Do we have an understanding?

Nigel, if you’re going to engage in dialogue in this forum you have to expect to be asked questions arising from that dialogue here, rather than on your blog.

Expecting others to go hunting for answers to questions made here, rather than simply asking for and receiving those answers as a part of the continuing dialogue, is about as emblamatic of the ‘shoddy debating techniques’ you claim not to tolerate as it gets. It’s not our job to look for evidence to defend positions you stake.

I practice evidence-based supplementation.

Excpet when the evidence isn’t there (as you now admit it isn’t with respect to fluctuating vitamin D levels preventing detection of reduced RR risk of cancer, In that case you’ll attribute the fact martinex and others can’t detect an effect to their dosing schedule for no reason.

And yes, I supposewe have an understanding of sorts–, I suppose: we’ll continue to ask whatever questions seem relevant to the discussion underway in this forum in this forum, rather than searching your blog on the off chance we might stumble across answers, and you’ll continue to complain when we actually expect you’ll hold up your part of the dialogue and capably defend your position.

I have a friend whose mother passed away in her early 30’s from breast cancer. And I’m pretty sure that she also has the genetic marker being discussed. About 15 years ago, after she had her children, she went ahead and had the surgery described above. Last I heard she was doing well.
I also KNEW a woman who had the marker and a convincing family history of breast cancer. Her doctors missed the developing cancer during one of her frequent exams. She passed away two years after the surgery and some very aggressive therapy. She was 33. I don’t know if she would’ve chosen this surgery, but describing it as mutilation seems rather crass.

@Narad: GFY.
@JGC: I don’t care about what other people care about. You should have noticed that by now.
There can’t always be evidence. Sometimes, you have to use a bit of nous.
The whole point of putting everything that I know in a blog with heavy labeling is to avoid going over the same old stuff time & time again with different people. I’ve got better things to do. You expect me to go hunting for answers, so why can’t I expect the same from other people?

BTW Nigel, I nearly forgot–with respect to your post at #123, is there some real reason–something other than “I think I’ve seen it happen before”–to presume the results and conclusions presented were invalid or exaggerated?

Those that say breast cancer cannot be prevented or reversed through personal lifestyle choices shouldn’t interrupt those patients doing it daily… or doctors that help patients heal themselves naturally.

Maybe those arrogant MD’s should get more educated about autoregulation and homeostasis. Sounds like some are jealous.

“Preventative” or prophylactic mastectomies are unscientific and certainly do not prevent cancer. It’s a total quack procedure.

When you create the ideal environment for cancer and tip off all the triggers it will hit the weakest point, if you have no breasts it will move up the chain to the next weakest link, but it will surface.

If you have cancer genes, you still have to activate them!

Cancer is big business in America. REAL prevention self-empowerment is rarely taught because it’s not good for business.

Everyone has a choice to make daily.

Accepting responsibility for your health is the first step. You can choose to smoke or not. You can choose to drink tap water or not. You can choose to guzzle-down your deep fried elephant ears with soda (or eat some raw organic fruit), Etc..

You don’t need to be dependent on a medical system that only creates customers and promises “cures” around the corner. Cancer will never be cured through a magic drug or vaccine.

Shame on the medico-drug cartel which preys on people’s hopes.

“Modern” medicine is many times unscientific, full of prejudice, illogic and susceptible to advertising.

Doctors are not taught to reason, they are programmed to believe in whatever their medical schools teach them and the leading doctors tell them.

Over the past 30 years the drug companies, with their enormous wealth, have taken medicine over and now control its research, what is taught and the information released to the public. It’s like the fox guarding the hen-house.

People need to set emotions aside and do research so they can see the truth. Protect our women and educate them so they can take control of their health once and for all.

Matthew Loop – while I will agree there are certainly lifestyle choices that will reduce your chances of getting cancer (something that Orac mentioned), do you have any evidence for anything you’ve said? In particular, what lifestyle choices would significantly reduce someone’s chances of breast or ovarian cancer if they have the BRCA 1 mutation and how do you know? Also, what evidence do you have for this statement:

When you create the ideal environment for cancer and tip off all the triggers it will hit the weakest point, if you have no breasts it will move up the chain to the next weakest link, but it will surface.

Matthew, would you care to back up any of your hot air with, you know, actual science? I mean citations from the literature that support your assertions. I’m particularly interested in your purported relationship between homeostasis and cancer prevention.

JGC said…
“There can’t always be evidence. Sometimes, you have to [just make some shit up]. FTFY.”
No, you didn’t fix anything. There’s a difference between making shit up and coming up with a plausible explanation for why something happens. The second requires intelligent thought. As an ex-engineer, I’m used to working stuff out (without the use of supportive studies).

“I wouldn’t expect you to go hunting for answers to questions regarding evidentiary support for claims I’ve asserted.”
Just remind me again of the claims you asserted.

“And I hope you don’t have to go hunting for answers to questions I ask you reagrding your postions, as I’d expect that you dervied it from the evidence in it’ssupport and it would be ready to hand.”
It’s in…you-know-where!

“If you’re expressing opinions, and only when questioned after the fact go looking for evidence to support them, well–what can I say? Shoddy debating technique.”
Are you expecting me to supply supportive evidence for everything that I say up-front? Who else does that here?

I’m here to learn. I hope that you are, too. Here’s my 1st post:-
“What do you think about http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/6/1586.full.pdf ? A 77% reduction in all-cancer RR is quite substantial. I did a search for “Joan Lappe” and “Joan M Lappe”, but got zero results.”
Was that demanding? Disrespectful? I don’t think so!
If I’m treated with respect, I give respect back. Everyone benefits and we all learn something. If I’m treated with disrespect, I switch to insult mode, level #1,000,000. Everyone suffers and no-one learns anything.
I therefore apologise for telling you to GFY earlier. I was in insult mode, level #1,000,000.
My reply to sophia8 was:-
“I meant results on this blog!” The exclamation mark meant that I was exclaiming. I was being friendly!
Crazy cat-lady imagines that I’m being snarky and attacks me. Result? Insult mode, level #1,000,000.
I don’t think that I’m ever going to be on good terms with Narad and/or elburto, but who knows? I see that Shay also doesn’t “get it”, so he/she can GFH, along with MI Dawn until they drop the attitude.

“BTW Nigel, I nearly forgot–with respect to your post at #123, is there some real reason–something other than “I think I’ve seen it happen before”–to presume the results and conclusions presented were invalid or exaggerated?”
You’ve mis-quoted me again. I wrote “I’ve seen quite a few studies where the results in the full study contradict the conclusion in the abstract.” There’s no “think” about it. The abstract concluded “X”, but the data in the full study showed “Y”. E.g. see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18402899
The conclusion is that 80mg/day of atorvastatin is beneficial, compared to 10mg/day. The full study is behind a pay-wall. Someone who had the full study passed me the following snippet of information. There were 6 more deaths (31) in the 80mg/day group than in the 10mg/day group (25). Therefore, deaths from other causes increased more in the 80mg/day group than deaths from major cardiovascular events decreased. However, as the study was only interested in major cardiovascular events, it made 80mg/day look favourable.

Therefore, if you want to contradict me, please supply a full study as supportive evidence. Peace out.

Those that say breast cancer cannot be prevented or reversed through personal lifestyle choices shouldn’t interrupt those patients doing it daily… or doctors that help patients heal themselves naturally.

What evidence do you have for such an extraordinary statement? All the evidence I have waded through over several years searching for some alternative treatment that is promsising in the treatment of cancer has led me nowhere. You can reduce your chances of getting cancer somewhat, but preventing or reversing it through lifestyle choices? Nonsense.

Maybe those arrogant MD’s should get more educated about autoregulation and homeostasis. Sounds like some are jealous.

I think arrogant CAM proponents like you who encourage cancer patients to reject effective treatment should either produce some evidence or shut up.

The rest of your comment is the usual litany of inaccurate and misleading statements about health we see over and over.

“Preventative” or prophylactic mastectomies are unscientific and certainly do not prevent cancer. It’s a total quack procedure.

Evidence?

When you create the ideal environment for cancer and tip off all the triggers it will hit the weakest point, if you have no breasts it will move up the chain to the next weakest link, but it will surface.

What “ideal environment” are you referring to? Cancer strikes all sorts of people, from the fittest to the unhealthiest, from children to the elderly, with little respect for lifestyle.

If you have cancer genes, you still have to activate them!

Why do people like you who clearly have little clue about these subjects feel justified in pontificating about them like this? We are discussing the BRCA genes which do not have to be activated; they are faulty, so they do not produce the proteins that normally repair damaged DNA. It may help to reduce the factors that we know can damage DNA, such as smoking, obesity, and other factors, but luck still plays a very large role.

Accepting responsibility for your health is the first step. You can choose to smoke or not. You can choose to drink tap water or not. You can choose to guzzle-down your deep fried elephant ears with soda (or eat some raw organic fruit), Etc..

That’s exactly what my conventional doctor says, but she doesn’t claim it will prevent cancer entirely, because that simply isn’t true. The overall cancer risk for vegetarians is only a little lower than that for meat eaters (8% lower in this study).

You don’t need to be dependent on a medical system that only creates customers and promises “cures” around the corner. Cancer will never be cured through a magic drug or vaccine.

Lots of cancers are cured by conventional treatments, such as childhood leukemia, breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer, all of which we have made great progress with. What cancers are cured by “lifestyle choices”?

Shame on the medico-drug cartel which preys on people’s hopes.

Pot, meet kettle. It’s the CAM proponents who tell people they can avoid or reverse cancer with “lifestyle choices” who offer false hope. Conventional medicine gives the cold, hard facts, and if they can’t cure you they will tell you so.

“Modern” medicine is many times unscientific, full of prejudice, illogic and susceptible to advertising.

That may be true to some extent, but the solution is to make it more scientific and eliminate prejudice. I have never seen anyone more prejudiced than a CAM proponent who will not accept the evidence that their favored treatment is useless, no matter how much of it they are shown, or how good it is.

Doctors are not taught to reason, they are programmed to believe in whatever their medical schools teach them and the leading doctors tell them.

Nonsense. You clearly have never attended a big meeting of doctors who are debating different treatments or diagnostic techniques. The way science works may not be perfect, but publishing peer-reviewed studies and opening them up to criticism works pretty well most of the time. The doctors and scientists I have worked with are not uncritical idiots, far from it.

Over the past 30 years the drug companies, with their enormous wealth, have taken medicine over and now control its research, what is taught and the information released to the public. It’s like the fox guarding the hen-house.

That’s not true! There are universities all over the world who do research, and who are not under the control of drug companies. Drug companies have every motive to produce treatments that work, and that put them ahead of their competitors. The last thing they want is a drug that they spend huge amounts of money and that then proves to be unsafe, costing them billions. like Vioxx.

People need to set emotions aside and do research so they can see the truth. Protect our women and educate them so they can take control of their health once and for all.

Those are the sort of rousing platitudes that deceive poor women like KimTinkham into thinking that they don’t need mammograms to detect cancer early, and they don’t need surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy to treat breast cancer. I will leave you with the words of Michael Baum, a UK cancer surgeon, who is as appalled as I am by the consequences of the sort of misinformation your are disseminating here:

In the UK, there is the “cancer act” to protect patients from the claims of CAM in treating cancer, sadly this is seldom enforced. As a cancer surgeon and professor of medical humanities I can attest to the tragic consequences of patients with breast cancer refusing modern humane treatment in place of barbaric alternatives. I call them barbaric as it allowed me to follow the natural history of untreated disease. Although I rarely endorse the use of mastectomy, if there is one thing more barbaric than radical surgery, it’s the disease itself being allowed to run riot. The cancer leaves behind a rotting stinking ulcer and a swollen arm as the involved lymph nodes block the drainage from the lymphatics.

Now please go away and have a long hard think about what the consequences of your actions might be.

Matthew Loop,Here’s some educational reading for you.
Dr. Moran has looked closely at a number of alleged natural cancer treatments and has assessed them very open-mindedly and fairly (perhaps too open-mindedly). None of them work.
You should also look at the clinical trial of the Gonzalez protocol that was supposed to cure pancreatic cancer. Gonzalez claimed that his regimen of juices, supplements, enzymes and coffee enemas was far superior to conventional treatment, yet in the trial not only did the patients on chemotherapy live on average 3 times longer than those on Gonzalez’s treatments, but they had a better quality of life as well.

Since 2005, Dr. Matthew Loop has been completely immersed integrating and successfully teaching highly profitable social media and internet marketing to brands, entrepreneurs, chiropractors, and other business professionals. He’s also an established author, speaker, iPhone app creator, consultant, and information product developer.

It seems like Loop has more than a casual interest in CAM. What exactly are you a doctor of, Matthew? I don’t see any specific degree listed on your LinkedIn page…

The LinkedIn profile is a hoot, but the FB presence is just sad for a self-described celebrity, even ignoring the shout-out for Rob Schneider on vaccines. Ladies, once again, freebag or die (somebody has issues with reading comprehension).

Those that say breast cancer cannot be prevented or reversed through personal lifestyle choices shouldn’t interrupt those patients doing it daily… or doctors that help patients heal themselves naturally.

Which patients are those, exactly, who are reversing breast cancer through personal lifestyle choices? Let’s see the evidence.

When you create the ideal environment for cancer and tip off all the triggers it will hit the weakest point, if you have no breasts it will move up the chain to the next weakest link, but it will surface.

‘Move up the chain’? What chain is that, exactly? What exactly makes one point on that chain weaker than any other?

If you have cancer genes, you still have to activate them!

That isn’t necessarily the case. The problem with the mutated gene Jolie has inherited, you’ll recall, is that the protein it expresses isn’t active–BRCA encodes a DNA repair protein and the mutation renders it inactive. One of the most common oncogene’s is that encoding the p53 tumor suppressor protein–and again cancers arise when mutations inactivate–not activate-this gene.

Cancer is big business in America. REAL prevention self-empowerment is rarely taught because it’s not good for business.

In exactly the same way that infectious disease is a big business, or allergy is big business, The size of the business reflects the size of the need it addresses–not greed.

Accepting responsibility for your health is the first step. You can choose to smoke or not. You can choose to drink tap water or not. You can choose to guzzle-down your deep fried elephant ears with soda (or eat some raw organic fruit), Etc.

All of which will reduce but not eliminate your risk of developing some cancers, and if you’ve inherited a BRCA mutation you’ll be at extremely high risk for breast and ovarian cancer.

Cancer will never be cured through a magic drug or vaccine.

Non Hodgkins lymphoma. leukemia. Testicular cancer. All have been cured, not through ‘magic’ but medical intervention. Vaccines won’t cure cancers, but the HPV vaccine significantly reduces risk of developing some cancers.

Over the past 30 years the drug companies, with their enormous wealth, have taken medicine over and now control its research, what is taught and the information released to the public.

In a word, no. They don’t.

People need to set emotions aside and do research so they can see the truth. Protect our women and educate them so they can take control of their health once and for all.

By ‘do research’ are you suggesting they conduct their own clinical trials? Or do you (as I suspect) mean ‘surf the internet’?

No, but we do have a vaccine against one form of it. It’s called Gardasil. Pretty amazing! I’m hopeful for the future.

“… you are all way more interested in being RIGHT.”

Actually, this is a common misconception. Most of us have outlined exactly what it would take to change our minds about various CAM therapies. Set it out right in the open. For example, I would change my mind after seeing a few double-blinded studies published in a first-tier medical journal. That sets out the criteria pretty clearly.

I do change my mind pretty often, actually. My haircuts from the 1980s no longer please me and purple is no longer my favorite color. I don’t feel like I have to be right all the time. In this case, I would be very, very pleased to admit I was wrong, once those double-blinded studies are published–it would mean more effective cancer treatments. Who doesn’t want that?

#132 “You can choose to drink tap water or not. You can choose to guzzle-down your deep fried elephant ears with soda (or eat some raw organic fruit), Etc..”

This is a very privileged point of view. Donut: 65 cents. Piece of raw organic fruit, sliced: $4. Tap water: $0. Bottle of water: $1.50. Even if you truly believe that this will magically prevent cancer, you must recognize that not everyone is privileged enough to afford this lifestyle, and that it is probably not their “choice” to be poor.

“Protect our women and educate them so they can take control of their health once and for all.”

We are not “your” women.

We can protect ourselves, thank you, and we are already educated, thank you, and we have taken control of our health already, thank you.

~ 6 weeks ago, on Orac’s NSSOB, I posed a general question about needle breast biopsies being done by a breast radiologist at a free-standing large radiology practice. That question could have been answered by a number of doctors who post on that blog or by women who have recently undergone needle breast biopsies. Orac replied to my question…not because I demanded an answer, but because it was a general question in Orac’s specialty.

No actually proving you are an arse hole that makes judgements on people you know nothing about.

Actually it’s my profession so the only person I have to believe in is my self and what works. If it doesn’t work I don’t believe in it. And I am surrounded by people that love me and that’s all that matters

It affects people who SAY they are healthy but actually have no idea about nutrition. Hence me scoffing heartily when a degree educated dietitian at the hospital told my mum to eat…….wait for it………..Frozen fish pies!!!!!!!!!!!

Nutrition does A lot I. Not only preventing but also helping greatly people with cancer. It helped my mum immensely and yes she died !!!!! People die

As I’ve made a typo’ error in comment #135, please ignore it if/when it’s published. Here it is again with one link redacted and the typo’ error corrected:-
JGC said…
“There can’t always be evidence. Sometimes, you have to [just make some shit up]. FTFY.”
No, you didn’t fix anything. There’s a difference between making shit up and coming up with a plausible explanation for why something happens. The second requires intelligent thought. As an ex-engineer, I’m used to working stuff out (without the use of supportive studies).

“I wouldn’t expect you to go hunting for answers to questions regarding evidentiary support for claims I’ve asserted.”
Just remind me again of the claims you asserted.

“And I hope you don’t have to go hunting for answers to questions I ask you reagrding your postions, as I’d expect that you dervied it from the evidence in it’ssupport and it would be ready to hand.”
It’s in…you-know-where!

“If you’re expressing opinions, and only when questioned after the fact go looking for evidence to support them, well–what can I say? Shoddy debating technique.”
Are you expecting me to supply supportive evidence for everything that I say up-front? Who else does that here?

I’m here to learn. I hope that you are, too. Here’s my 1st post:-
“What do you think about *link redacted* ? A 77% reduction in all-cancer RR is quite substantial. I did a search for “Joan Lappe” and “Joan M Lappe”, but got zero results.”
Was that demanding? Disrespectful? I don’t think so!
If I’m treated with respect, I give respect back. Everyone benefits and we all learn something. If I’m treated with disrespect, I switch to insult mode, level #1,000,000. Everyone suffers and no-one learns anything.
I therefore apologise for telling you to GFY earlier. I was in insult mode, level #1,000,000.
My reply to sophia8 was:-
“I meant results on this blog!” The exclamation mark meant that I was exclaiming. I was being friendly!
Crazy cat-lady imagines that I’m being snarky and attacks me. Result? Insult mode, level #1,000,000.
I don’t think that I’m ever going to be on good terms with Narad and/or elburto, but who knows? I see that Shay also doesn’t “get it”, so he/she can GFH, along with MI Dawn until they drop the attitude.

“BTW Nigel, I nearly forgot–with respect to your post at #123, is there some real reason–something other than “I think I’ve seen it happen before”–to presume the results and conclusions presented were invalid or exaggerated?”
You’ve mis-quoted me again. I wrote “I’ve seen quite a few studies where the results in the full study contradict the conclusion in the abstract.” There’s no “think” about it. The abstract concluded “X”, but the data in the full study showed “Y”. E.g. see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18402899
The conclusion is that 80mg/day of atorvastatin is beneficial, compared to 10mg/day. The full study is behind a pay-wall. Someone who had the full study passed me the following snippet of information. There were 26 more deaths in the 80mg/day group than in the 10mg/day group. Therefore, deaths from other causes increased more in the 80mg/day group than deaths from major cardiovascular events decreased. However, as the study was only interested in major cardiovascular events, it made 80mg/day look favourable.

Therefore, if you want to contradict me, please supply a full study as supportive evidence. Peace out.

Don’t bother educating kids on what to put in their body and moving their body just give them a vaccine ! Whoopee do we have a cure

Pareidolius if you are going to quote me then use the whole quote and don’t paraphrase me.

It was a fucking joke quite obviously saying that he followed me up with a phone call actually to be precise to see that I was ok after my miscarriage . He did nothing to me medically, however he had the compassion of a human being to see if I was ok. It’s called irony – clearly you might need to look that up.

Love and compassion goes a long way in my life and I am so grateful for it and at the end of the day when drugs weren’t even taking away the pain anymore it made a difference to my mum. Yo should all try it sometime its nice.

Better than this bullshit and being attacked

Double blind studies are all well and good and I have heaps of them but seriously they are also very very fallible and can be manipulated too as can anything In life.

Bottom line is collaborating is listening to one another and actually working together for a solution and no one on here is truly Interested in that.

You can all move onto someone else as I am sooooooo exhausted from. Dealing with all of your crap and honestly that will give me cancer if I keep that up so much as I hate to leave it there I think you all really want to be right and also just kinda fight it out so please go ahead

Er, yeah. Because if you get cancer, you’re by definition not healthy.

Of course, stating the obvious doesn’t prove that all you have to do is have the right nutrition and you’ll never get sick. If that worked, then Jolie wouldn’t ever need a doctor. She can afford to eat the right foods all the time, so why bother going to a doctor at all right?

Ah, so the truth is out then. Lisa’s flailing is due to her “professional interest”. Colour me shocked that there’s an agenda at stake, and money to be made by dissuading vulnerable people from seeking real treatment.

You trolls of today are sub-par. You almost make me yearn for Thingy, Augustine and Granny. At least they weren’t dull.

@Dr Fruit Loop – Pitch perfect satire of a quacktitioner there. The arrogant mansplanation and classism was a nice touch. Well done!

@Calli – Nah, that’s a theory that we discounted ages ago, on the grounds of it not fitting with the clues, or even being interesting.

Not to mention that the meta-crisis Doctor (actually, same goes for the Tenth Doctor) didn’t exist. The Parting of the Ways is the one on Satellite 5, where we find out what ‘Bad Wolf’ means. I read a solid fan theory that places Clara’s creation at that point. It might all be bollocks, but that’s half the fun!

Let’s just hope that Moffatt has actually invented a story this time, instead of plagiarising another author’s work. Bad Moff!

You know nothing about me and have not even read my comments properly and yet you make assumptions about me and judgements that are Sadly lacking in any force. Yo really should learn to read.

I have been an aromatherapist and natural therapist for years. I don’t make any money to speak of and at the moment barely have money to pay my bills as I took a job last year and got made redundant. Don’t really care as I don’t real leant to make money unless it aligns with my principles, I don’t like scamming people. Shame m mums oncologist didn’t share the same view. He made plenty.

I would never tell someone what to do regarding treatment and if you go back and read my posts you will see I didn’t even tell my own mother or try to dissuade her from a treatment I wholeheartedly disagreed with. I simply said it was her choice and she was to make an informed decision based on both the facts and how she felt about it.

Once again a cruel and determined judgement on someone that don’t know. You are judgemental , offensive, cruel and unkind and I seriously doubt you even care as you comments are designed to hurt and shoot down. And yes you have hurt me so you do win in that sense. However if you think that makes you big and clever then you are simply a psychopath. I have no idea why you would want to cause such pain when there is enough in the world already. You make me feel like I am doing a really great thing actually because at least I am not out there purposely hurting people. My only agenda Is to help people and make a difference hence the standing back when m mum had to make that choice for herself . It was the hardest and most painful thing I ever had to do but it is not my place to make decisions for someone else. Thanks for you inconsiderate and uncaring comments. It really makes people pay attention. And at least I know now that you definitely have an agenda with that comment. What a lowlife

I don’t prey on vulnerable people elburto . Only ones that want my help and then I never make promises I can’t keep. I promised my mum only that I would never give up on her and I didn’t.

I wish you felt the same way. Vulnerability clearly means weakness to you. You should go look it up. It’s actually a great quality to have and much can come from it.

Self righteousness, vindictiveness and being judgemental however are not in the same arena. I really hope your very happy with yourself. You are extremely mean without good reason. No one is attacking you but then again yo don’t need an excuse, it’s just the game that is played on here. Whilst I am sad and upset that I came across this blog I have been feeling really good today about all I did for my mum and for clients I have treated in my clinic that have been going through cancer and no I haven’t attempted to cure them or discourage them from any treatment. I can see my mum smiling me and thanking me. She said ” you will never know how much you helped me ” . I think I get it now.

That is simply untrue. Cancer affects everyone, there is no magic state of health that makes anyone immune to cancer. Our DNA repair mechanisms are not perfect and the damage caused by the free radicals produced during normal metabolism, by background radiation (some from inside your own body) and by cosmic rays (to name but a few sources) is unavoidable. If the damage that occurs and is imperfectly repaired happens to generate a mutation that causes cancer, then you will get cancer. There are genetic susceptibilities and resistances to cancer, but there are no guarantees.

It affects people who SAY they are healthy but actually have no idea about nutrition.

So why do people who eat nothing but organic fruits and vegetables, such as Linda McCartney, Steve Jobs and George Harrison, get cancer? Why do studies such as the EPIC study of over half a million people find no link between fruit and vegetable consumption and breast cancer?

We found that the consumption of fruit and vegetables is not associated with breast cancer risk. This is an important finding as it helps to narrow down the factors potentially involved in breast cancer etiology and prevention.

When people have advanced cancer they often suffer from cachexia, basically because their tumors are consuming all their nutrients. The last thing they need is to be half-starved with vegetables and juices. A frozen fish pie sounds like an excellent way to get some decent nutrition into a cancer patient. What exactly do you think is wrong with a frozen fish pie? Fish is a healthy diet choice. You should check your facts before scoffing at those who are better educated than you.

I have been an aromatherapist and natural therapist for years. […] I don’t like scamming people.

In my opinion aromatherapy and “natural therapy” (whatever that is) are both scams, certainly if you make any claims that they can prevent or treat any diseases apart from, perhaps, stress-related ones.

I’m sorry you are upset at some of the responses you have had here, but you have to understand that you are spreading untruths about cancer that lead people to make foolish and dangerous decisions. I get angry when I see this type of misinformation being spread as it leads to the sort of consequences Michael Baum describes, as I quoted in my comment at #135.

elburto cackled
“@Nigel – Blockquote is your friend. Sorry we can’t seem to stick to your ground rules here on your blog. Mea maxima culpa.”
Blockquote wastes valuable space. I use ” ” as that doesn’t waste valuable space.
“You trolls of today are sub-par. You almost make me yearn for Thingy, Augustine and Granny. At least they weren’t dull.”
Pot. Kettle. Black, sunshine. You got everything wrong in your previous post and I showed you for the total fool you really are.

As I have no idea if or when comment #158 will be published, I shall break it up into smaller parts.
JGC said…
“There can’t always be evidence. Sometimes, you have to [just make some shit up]. FTFY.”
No, you didn’t fix anything. There’s a difference between making shit up and coming up with a plausible explanation for why something happens. The second requires intelligent thought. As an ex-engineer, I’m used to working stuff out (without the use of supportive studies).

Blockquote wastes valuable space. I use ” ” as that doesn’t waste valuable space.
“You trolls of today are sub-par. You almost make me yearn for Thingy, Augustine and Granny. At least they weren’t dull.”

I believe you, but,
Lack of intention of harm doesn’t always translate into lack of harm.

That’s why the first lesson in first aid course is, until you had proper training, don’t try to fix people. A untrained helper is more likely to maim than to help. Sometimes just by being in the way.
“I only acted on good intentions” is cold comfort to the person you rescued from a car accident but whose spine you broke by moving her recklessly. Especially if there was no risk of the car catching fire or something.
As the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Also:

You know nothing about me

Elburto could defend herself perfectly well, but from having read some of her previous posts, I know a bit more about her than you. And I feel compelled to tell you this.
You have no idea either who are the people talking to you on this blog. What lemons life may have given them.
And when you said this:

Vulnerability clearly means weakness to you. You should go look it up.

You have no idea how perfectly well some readers here know what vulnerability means. In their flesh or in the flesh of their flesh.

Heliantus said…
“@ Nigel Kinbrum
I’ve been gagged by Orac.
Oh, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
Comment #135 was posted last night. It’s still in moderation. When even short comments go straight into moderation, I tend to get the hint. So you can GFY, too. Let’s see if this one makes it.

flip said…
“Blockquote wastes valuable space. I use ” ” as that doesn’t waste valuable space.
“You trolls of today are sub-par. You almost make me yearn for Thingy, Augustine and Granny. At least they weren’t dull.”

I must be missing something… how does blockquote waste space?”
1) There’s a blank line above and below the Blockquoted text.
2) Blockquoted text width is narrower, so there are more more lines of text.
See, I’m polite when someone’s polite to me.

I must be missing something… how does blockquote waste space?”
1) There’s a blank line above and below the Blockquoted text.
2) Blockquoted text width is narrower, so there are more more lines of text.

Yes, but there’s a reason blockquote exists. It’s to make text more legible and thereby foster better understanding of what is said. This is also why punctuation exists. That takes up room too, but it aids with communication. Nobody pays for website space per pixel, which is why I am confused as to why it’s better to use quotation marks and not blockquotes. Frankly I’d rather the comment be legible than have to search for which bits are mine and which bits are yours.

See, I’m polite when someone’s polite to me.

I can tell you are new here. Although my question was legitimately polite (and am still legitimately confused as to the choice to avoid blockquotes), that isn’t to say that I am always polite. The regulars here will tell you that I can and do put on the boxing gloves on occasion. I prefer to leave the rudeness as a last gasp, this-person-is-beyond-infuriating, tactic though.

Having said that: some people confuse blunt and direct criticism of ideas for impolite behaviour. You shouldn’t expect people to simply fall all over themselves just because you posted an idea. This is a science blog and the discussion is robust. As it should be.

I must be missing something… how does blockquote waste space?”
1) There’s a blank line above and below the Blockquoted text.
2) Blockquoted text width is narrower, so there are more more lines of text.

Okay, blockquote may take up more space – but valuable? Who’s paying for this “valuable” space and how much does it cost? I haven’t received any bills for this space yet and I don’t want any surprises.

I must be missing something… how does blockquote waste space?”
1) There’s a blank line above and below the Blockquoted text.
2) Blockquoted text width is narrower, so there are more more lines of text.

Yes, but there’s a reason blockquote exists. It’s to make text more legible and thereby foster better understanding of what is said. This is also why punctuation exists. That takes up room too, but it aids with communication.”
Scrolling down through loads of text is a pain. This is why I shall continue to quote in a concise way, that people on every other blog on which I comment are perfectly happy with.

“I can tell you are new here. Although my question was legitimately polite (and am still legitimately confused as to the choice to avoid blockquotes), that isn’t to say that I am always polite.”
Is it that obvious? 😉 I always start in polite mode. Please read my first comment here and subsequent replies, to understand what it is that makes me switch to insult mode.

“Having said that: some people confuse blunt and direct criticism of ideas for impolite behaviour. You shouldn’t expect people to simply fall all over themselves just because you posted an idea.”
You need to read the preceding comments to understand what happened. I politely asked for an opinion on an RCT and all hell broke loose.

” This is a science blog and the discussion is robust. As it should be.”
Robust, I am perfectly happy with. Downright rude, and I will switch to insult mode. I have CDO. It’s just like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order. As they should be.

Okay, blockquote may take up more space – but valuable? Who’s paying for this “valuable” space and how much does it cost? I haven’t received any bills for this space yet and I don’t want any surprises.

Yeah, this is why I’m confused. Why save space by using quotations when there’s no need to save the space in the first place.

However, Scienceblogs.com is paid for somehow. Every time you post a comment or load the page you cost *them* bandwidth. Every time you use the internet it costs *you* money. The longer the page, the more images, etc on the page, the longer is takes to download; the more you spend and the more they spend hosting it. So I thought perhaps he might have had some small point as to using space in terms of blockquotes, but I just didn’t understand it.

The whole thing seems like it was invented in 1990 along with dancing gifs and sparkly text. 😉

TBruce said…
“Okay, blockquote may take up more space – but valuable? Who’s paying for this “valuable” space and how much does it cost? I haven’t received any bills for this space yet and I don’t want any surprises.”
I didn’t mean valuable in monetary terms. I meant valuable in terms of time wasted scrolling down through unnecessary white space to read all of the comments, of which this is the 178th.

Scrolling down through loads of text is a pain. This is why I shall continue to quote in a concise way, that people on every other blog on which I comment are perfectly happy with.

You’re not really saving all that much space though. Two lines per comment. I don’t get why you’d rather ‘save scrolling’ for such a tiny amount than make your comments more legible.

Please read my first comment here and subsequent replies, to understand what it is that makes me switch to insult mode… You need to read the preceding comments to understand what happened. I politely asked for an opinion on an RCT and all hell broke loose.

Unfortunately I am reading comments in between other work and am slowly making my way down. However, I am a regular here (haven’t been here for about a month but was regular till then) and am quite familiar with the tone and style of the comments. I have probably missed some context from other comment threads that I have missed over the past month, as it seems people are familiar with you. I won’t state what I think of their treatment of you because I haven’t read enough. Suffice to say that I suspect that, like many other people who come along, you’ve hit a merry-go-round and they’re trying to get you to respond to their questions.

Robust, I am perfectly happy with. Downright rude, and I will switch to insult mode. I have CDO. It’s just like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order. As they should be.

Then you also haven’t met most of the trolls. We get mighty sick of the people who come here to tell people that children should be treated with unproven therapies; that people with cancer should avoid actual medical advice in favour of unproven therapies; that it’s all your own damn fault that you got sick; and that wishful thinking will save the day. We also get sick of people who die because they avoided getting life-saving treatment because they preferred the wishy-washiness of altmed.

After decades of responding to these kinds of attitudes, and the resulting insults hurled if we don’t treat their special snowflake experiences and feelings as sacrosanct, I’m surprised that anyone is still left to tend to these comments.

Try responding with evidence and not conjecture, and you might actually win friends and influence people. Respond with avoidance and yeah, you’ll get shown the door.

Nice work, lilady. What a surprise – yet another sCAMster using a loved one’s suffering as a shield for criticism. You sure charge people a lot of money for your “expertise”, Ms Tristram. I’m sorry everyone here has been so rude as to point out that what you are peddling is sheer fantastasy (not a typo – it means a fantasy that’s metastasized and started killing the part of the brain where critical thinking occurs), but you’re the one who barged in here and starting flinging accusations. So kindly pack up your essential oils and flounce back to your sCAM Cloud-Cuckoo land, Professor Trelawney.

Every time you post a comment or load the page you cost *them* bandwidth.

Using blockquote instead of quotation marks saves twenty-three bytes per instance. Compared to the overall byte count of a page, particularly the graphics, that is trivial. Block quoting make comments much more readable, more than justifying the extra fraction of a second required to scroll past it.

@Edith Prickly – I’m glad I’m on your side!!! 😉
As for Lisa, you live in a country with government funded health care and yet you claim to have found a significantly cheaper way to treat/ameliorate the effects of cancer and the UK government hasn’t climbed all over that???? Here in Canada, the government would be all over that in a heartbeat and force us to do that first and then the more expensive options. I seriously doubt anything you say.

No, not rude. Merely insolent. It’s written on the header of the blog.
I can point you to some very rude blogs.

So you can GFY, too.

Be kind to animals, and that’s how they reward you.

When I posted, it was still early morning on the Eastern coast of North America. Saturday morning. It still is, actually.
So maybe you can give some time to ORAC to wake up, have breakfast, read his newspapers, mow his lawn, play with his kids, and eventually fire up his computer and notice that your very important post got caught in limbo.

BTW, did you notice how much valuable space we are wasting right now in this sterile argument?
I personally love blockquotes. Very handy. Took me some time to learn to use them properly, though.

Scroll down to her third tweet/link to Mikey’s vile, libelous post about Angelina Jolie:

It’s linked on her FB page as well, and she says it is, “very confronting and very interesting. well worth reading and considering”. Linking to that revolting garbage is “Wholehearted Inspiration on Life, Health, Wealth, and Love”?

Bleugh. Now my imaginary chakras are all screwed up with imaginary negative energy.

#169, 170 Ah, the conspiracy theories about moderation. You can try all you want, man, they’re never going to believe you that there’s an automatic filter with a list of words, or that link-heavy posts slide into moderation automatically.

Nigel: It takes sustained, long-term effort to get banned/deliberately moderated here. Honest. And Orac doesn’t watch the comments all that closely. He has other obligations. So some patience might be required. Everybody’s had posts held up from time to time.

Khani said…
“Nigel: It takes sustained, long-term effort to get banned/deliberately moderated here. Honest. And Orac doesn’t watch the comments all that closely. He has other obligations. So some patience might be required. Everybody’s had posts held up from time to time.”
Thanks, Khani. It looks as though Mr Gorski is working today.

Interestingly, both Matt and LIsa, who provide services ( chiropractic and aromatherapy et al) to clients, have expanded into teaching others how to enlarge their own health service businesses via social media, marketting, retail, team building and other information technology ( e.g. apps).

So what’s wrong with this picture?
Well, if your own business is so great do you really need to supplement your income in diverse ways by teaching?
Or are they only training others out of the goodness of their own hearts because they want to see others become as successful as they themselves are?
Wouldn’t that deprive their clients( and possibly many other potential clients) of their chiropractic or aromatherapeutic skills?

Oddly, when I counsel people I don’t try to talk them into becoming counsellors so that I can profit by training… they have these places called “universities” and “instututes” for acquiring those skills.

flip said…
“@Nigel
You’re not really saving all that much space though. Two lines per comment. I don’t get why you’d rather ‘save scrolling’ for such a tiny amount than make your comments more legible.”
I don’t like italic text (eyes go slanty) or underlined text (looks like a link). I much prefer bold text. Is what I’m doing so hard to read? This is the only place where I’ve had a complaint.

To be fair, there are other reasons. One is that it is community building between yourself and others of the same field, in the same way that going to a conference and discussing your recent study helps develop new ideas for research.

And yes, it does do good for your own business too, because someone may refer you business if they don’t provide what you offer. Ie. a naturopath can offer advice on using twitter, a spa owner uses twitter, then forwards the resulting clients on to the naturopath as a way of “paying back” the favour.

I don’t like italic text (eyes go slanty) or underlined text (looks like a link). I much prefer bold text. Is what I’m doing so hard to read? This is the only place where I’ve had a complaint.

Sigh…

In editorial circles, italics and bold have different usages and should only be used for emphasis, not as default styles. On the internet, underlined text usually *is* a link.

Even then, none of those definitions changes the fact that *blockquoting makes your comments easier to read*. It’s not about you. It’s about a conversation being a two-way street and making it easier for people to understand you goes a long way to improving your ability to communicate with them.

If people are complaining about it here then my suggestion is, use blockquotes here and do whatever the bleep you want on other sites. People are asking you to change it not because they’re fussy, but because they find it hard to read your comments and the only person who can improve it is you.

Learn something about style and format as part of editing language please. Grammar, punctuation, font styles, all were invented and continue to be used for the simple reason that it *aids in communication* and *helps reduce confusion between reader and writer*.

O.K. I’ve searched this site. There appears to be zero information on how to Blockquote text. Apart from the comment permalink button, there are no other buttons for quoting purposes. This blog’s not very user-friendly, in every sense!

I know but these two seem a *little* too focused on the pr part of their business for my comfort.
I’ve seen this in other woo- topic entrepreneurship,e.g. reiki, nutritionists. Their business becomes selling the business, not pursuing their trade.

In other news:

Mike Adams reveals that his and Scott Bell’s video of Jolie-gate was CENSORED by youtube.

However he kindly provides it @ NN- it’s 14 minutes and the volume is a little low and unadjustable-
but here’s a synopsis for the amount I could tolerate:

we “follow the money” to observe corporate ownship of human genes, in which Jolie is a willing participant “hyping genes tests’
after which the stock price of that company soared
thus linking it to Obama’s “crony capitalism” –
it is merely a “PR psych op” , another product of the
Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex
now fattening on Obamacare,
whilst creating SLAVERY-
disguised as freedom and women’s empowerment-
it’s MIND CONTROL socialism**
to influence supreme court decisions
-what is Jolie getting out of this?
etc.

Reminds me of the OCD “Cytokine-Autism Link Fixated” poster who is “currently seeking self awarded degrees in immunology, neurobiology, gastroenterology, genetics, metabolism, epigenetics, and other areas to try to see how they all work together in the world of autism.”

Sorry, to make it clear, what I mean is that if people are complaining about your formatting, then they are also complaining about their ability to understand what you are saying.

O.K. I’ve searched this site. There appears to be zero information on how to Blockquote text. Apart from the comment permalink button, there are no other buttons for quoting purposes. This blog’s not very user-friendly, in every sense!

So, how do you do Blockquoting?

Yeah, that’s because most blog comments don’t come with explanations of how to code HTML.

And thank you for changing your opinion enough to give it a go.

Try doing this:

Type the comment

Remove all the spaces though. (Fingers crossed the blog doesn’t muck up the code)

Or are they only training others out of the goodness of their own hearts because they want to see others become as successful as they themselves are?

Of course they are! Just like those nice people who email you offering to help you earn $thousands with their simple method. They’d be using their method to make themselves rich, except that they’re sooo altruistic.

Of course not. If they have cancer, they’re not healthy! (as flip said)
Oh, wait, did you mean that healthy people don’t develop cancer?
You don’t know much about carcinogenesis, do you?

Please take some time to think about Krebiozen’s reply @163 to that comment of yours.

@161, my emphasis

I have been an aromatherapist and natural therapist for I don’t make any money to speak of and at the moment barely have money to pay my bills as I took a job last year and got made redundant. Don’t really care as I don’t real leant to make money unless it aligns with my principles, I don’t like scamming people.

I have a method that has been passed down to me through the generations. However I don’t sell any secrets- because it’s simple: make conservative investments in product stables and innovative technology as you study the markets a great deal and WAIT..
and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait…

I actually feel sorry for the stars out there. Bad enough they get hounded by journalists all the time, but they also get to have their personal medical decisions discussed by complete strangers as if they have some right over the starlet’s body parts and what they’re used for.

So when a doctor says you have a “chance” of getting cancer, what he’s implying is that you have no control over cancer, and that’s an outright lie. Cancer quackery, in other words.

Positive thinking strikes again!

other, more ancient, plant- and nutrition-based medical traditions.

As yes, and the argument from antiquity and naturalistic fallacy all in one sentence.

@Sophia8

Why do these quacks always refer to breast surgery as “mutilation”?

I’d guess it’s just another way to reinforce body image stereotypes for women and a continued consciousness of looks over other features for which we can feel proud.

Of course the sad thing is that they say this to the very people whose careers are predicated on being beautiful above all else. They therefore also reinforce the idea that if one decides to become an actor/model/musician, you may as well not bother if you’re anything other than perfect.

@Ken

However, society-wide there’s a tendency to see mastectomy or even breast-reduction surgery as mutilation, while breast enlargement is cosmetic.

There’s a little religious tendency in here too: mutilation because you’re removing what was naturally there to begin with and therefore playing god; cosmetic because you’re simply enhancing your natural gifts.

@Denice

‘Ladies, if you do what I say and use my products, even you, despite your present decrepitude, can be pleasing to me.
Of course, you can never presume to be on my level but at least you won’t be as miserable and undesirable as you are now following your own devices.’

It’s almost like they’re saying “I’m gorgeous and even though you are tired and saggy, if you follow my directions I may just smile upon you and think you’re hot”. It’s appealing to the Desperate Housewives in them.

@Lisa

What I was trying to figure out ALONE ( because of this kind of marlarky where there is little to no communication) was if I DO use supplements and nutrition in conjunction with the pharmaceutical medicine she was given – what was working WITH and what was working AGAINST or rather PROMOTING the cancer in some way.

That’s what science experiments are for. You can’t figure this stuff out just by guessing, and you also can’t figure it out without some control for bias *and* confounders, and you can’t figure it out with a subject group of one.

I’m sorry about your mother, but it’s clear you don’t understand how science works or how treatments are chosen. Of course, now that your blog has been posted I’m much less sympathetic.

Perhaps this is why people here aren’t polite. People post with agendas and tend to lie about their own situation in order to make them seem like sympathetic JAQ-offs all the while making those who are skeptical of claims appear like mean brutes.

You know, the only people who ever come off as shills are the altmedders, when they go out of their way to hide their COIs.

Don’t really care as I don’t real leant to make money unless it aligns with my principles, I don’t like scamming people

Proof of the pudding. Your principles obviously don’t include making your own COI known whilst complaining about cancer treatments and science. Most people’s definition of scam would include hiding COIs. Altmedders scream when scientists do it, but when altmedders do it, it’s just dandy.

Only ones that want my help and then I never make promises I can’t keep.

How can you promise an effective and safe treatment if it’s not based on evidence but gut feeling instead?

@Elburto #98

Thanks for sharing that story. It made me think a lot about a family member of mine, who after having surgery that did not work, decided not to have further surgery (with an extremely low risk of saving their life) and die peacefully later that week. Instead of going through yet more trauma, they chose to spend the last hours and days with the people they loved, knowing that trying everything wasn’t worth the exchange for a peaceful end. (This all takes place by the way, in the same country as Lisa, what with the socialised medicine and such. It’s not perfect but it’s also not third-world either)

I really hope when my time comes I take it with the same grace as my family member did.

My sympathies for the Other Elburto (can I call her that?) and her family.

@Nigel

Something I forgot to add to my comments above is that this blog is by far the best I have come across in terms of discussion. Most blogs, whether it is science or not, come with owners who try to steer the conversation; who ban comments or dis/encourage certain policies; etc. This one has been the only one I’ve come across where the only times you get banned is for spamming or sock puppetry. In other words: freedom of speech far more than you get anywhere else.

And that includes more than that given by people who refuse to answer questions posted on one site by insisting they go somewhere else to ask them. (Of course you could do yourself a compromise and just link to the relevant blog posts on your site)

On that note: thank you for the blockquote comment @211. 🙂

@DW

Looking at Lisa’s site for a moment, I worry about the whole “the type of client I want to work with is…” page. That’s some weird stuff. I’d agree with you that it’s a little like she couldn’t make up her mind as to what she wanted to do with her life. (Er, not that I can talk really)

Also, who takes social media marketing advice from someone who has a google page rank of 0 and a facebook like of the oh-so-amazing 63?

Only one of my twitter accounts has roughly 100 times as many followers and I don’t go out of my way to build it.

I hope she’s better at altmed than she is at social media advice. (Er, you know what I mean)

Yet, you wasted the “valuable space” of 4 additional comments arguing the point!

If you wish to contribute to this – or any – forum, you need to conform to the expectations of this forum. Don’t complain that the rest of us are not following what’s expected elsewhere. And don’t get all indignant that we are not meeting your expectations.

O.K. I’ve searched this site. There appears to be zero information on how to Blockquote text.

Google html tags. That’s how I learned it. Unfortunately, when we switched to Nat Geo, we lost the preview function which allowed you to check if you did them right before posting, but the rest of us cope with that (this is why you see occasional apologies for botched tags).

Something I forgot to add to my comments above is that this blog is by far the best I have come across in terms of discussion. Most blogs, whether it is science or not, come with owners who try to steer the conversation; who ban comments or dis/encourage certain policies; etc. This one has been the only one I’ve come across where the only times you get banned is for spamming or sock puppetry. In other words: freedom of speech far more than you get anywhere else.

And that includes more than that given by people who refuse to answer questions posted on one site by insisting they go somewhere else to ask them. (Of course you could do yourself a compromise and just link to the relevant blog posts on your site)

On that note: thank you for the blockquote comment @211. 🙂

This blog looks really good. Shame about some of the commenters! As long as I don’t get banned for giving as good as (or worse than) I get.

I prefer to link to stuff that I’ve already written about, but my last attempt to add a link to my blog put the comment in pre-mod. :-/

I use html in comments on other blogs, mainly “a href=” and “b”, so using “blockquote” isn’t a problem (unless I mis-type it).

Yet, you wasted the “valuable space” of 4 additional comments arguing the point!

If you wish to contribute to this – or any – forum, you need to conform to the expectations of this forum. Don’t complain that the rest of us are not following what’s expected elsewhere. And don’t get all indignant that we are not meeting your expectations.

O.K. I’ve searched this site. There appears to be zero information on how to Blockquote text.

Google html tags. That’s how I learned it. Unfortunately, when we switched to Nat Geo, we lost the preview function which allowed you to check if you did them right before posting, but the rest of us cope with that (this is why you see occasional apologies for botched tags).

How am I supposed to know the expectations of this forum? I was so busy defending myself from crazy cat lady, el-bungo and Noraid that the only vibe I picked up was a really bad one. Once the pre-mod issue is sorted, I’m sure that I’ll fit in here just fine. RE html: See my previous comment.

It affects people who SAY they are healthy but actually have no idea about nutrition.

As it happens, this is the sixth yahrtzeit of my best friend, z”l, a well-known figure at rec.food.veg.cooking and in myriad other circles who succumbed to colon cancer without ever seeing his second son.

If you ever decide to lay the load of blobovian nonsense in your head to rest, Lisa, I recommend using the shovel right side up.

Something I forgot to add to my comments above is that this blog is by far the best I have come across in terms of discussion. Most blogs, whether it is science or not, come with owners who try to steer the conversation; who ban comments or dis/encourage certain policies; etc. This one has been the only one I’ve come across where the only times you get banned is for spamming or sock puppetry. In other words: freedom of speech far more than you get anywhere else.

crazy cat lady howled…
<blockquote.Nigeepoo…Is that your granddaughter who you are posing with on your blog? Do you refer to her as a “twat” and as a “retard”?
Why would I do that? She isn’t any of those things, unlike you. Playing the misogynist card shows that you have lost the argument. You have nothing left to offer. Just go away and leave me alone, you oxygen-thief.

What a creep…reminds me of DJT, with his tandem posting of what he has posted…and what we have posted…on his own blog:

Now that my comment #159 has finally been published (woot!), there’s no need to reproduce it on my blog. I’ve deleted it. Thanks for linking to my blog again. I dare not risk adding links to it myself, as my comment tends to end up in pre-mod.

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel….how are you to know the expectations of this forum?

Perhaps you should have first read cautiously and then judiciously approached the regulars after having figured out their areas of expertise and lingo prior to profusely and repeatedly insulting their esteemed personages…

well, I suppose I should go ahead outline a tiny bit of the
………………………………..drumroll……………………………………………..
RULZ of the GAME

Ahem!

First this blog supports SBM therefore, if you follow its precepts and consensus opinion you can just say so. THUS there is no need to defend it or present research et al UNLESS you are using it to instruct someone in its arcanely beautiful and majestically data-driven forays towards reality. Whatever that is.

(SECOND)..
many folk here are experts and well-versed in the intricacies of their metier- although that is nothing- if they have no data. So, those who ‘know their stuff’ can and will refer you elsewhere into the foundations of their science.

HOWEVER…
if you are defending something that runs afoul of consensus, data, research etc. that indeed, runs widdershins to reason and the established facts of physics,chemistry, biology, psychology etc..

YOU need to present your material in great detail and YOU need to show WHY we should toss aside the work of many over many decades for a contrarian view.

ANYONE can say ANYTHiNG… that doesn’t make it true.

The other day I heard this tale- courtesy of a usual suspect-

He met a guy in an airport who was familiar with his alt med work and introduced himself as a pharma rep and the anthithesis of all the woo-meister stood for:

he ate anything he liked, was 300 lbs and drank alcohol etc.
He paid medical doctors to get patients on his drugs for arthritis- each getting a set fee for each patient signed on- doctors could make FORTUNES this way.

He also took physicians to “5-star” (?) resorts and the best restaurants, as he did also for his friends ( who would know?) – he drove a spiffy German luxury vehicle- he could easily make 100-150K USD extra each year
.
SO he laughed ( ha ha!) at the earnest, altruistic, humanitarian work of the humble natural health practitioner and small businessman.

Who then retorted,” Arthritis drugs? Like VIOXX? That KILLED thousands of people?”

Right. He did.
And I can say that I meet up in airports with well-known, married anti-vaccine doctors and the participate in orgies and secret pagan rituals with them. Frequently.
Doesn’t make it true.
(Plus most of them are *terribly* unattractive. I have standards, you know)

ANYONE can say ANYTHING. And on the internet, they do.
Show us the data, Mister..

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel….how are you to know the expectations of this forum?

Perhaps you should have first read cautiously and then judiciously approached the regulars after having figured out their areas of expertise and lingo prior to profusely and repeatedly insulting their esteemed personages…

well, I suppose I should go ahead outline a tiny bit of the
………………………………..drumroll……………………………………………..
RULZ of the GAME
.
.
.

I suppose that I should have, really. Unfortunately, life’s too short for such niceties, so I use the principle of 1-2-3 Magic. It’s not just for kids.
Do the right thing? I’ll be sweetness and light personified. I’ll be the best asset you ever had. I have mad Googling skillz!
Do the wrong thing? I’ll be really horrible to you. I’ll be the worst liability you ever had. I have mad insulting skillz!

So there you have it! Nigee in a nut-shell.

My blog is Evidence-Based. As there are experts posting on here, should any of them find something awry on my blog, please leave a comment telling me about it.

Denice Walter: No need to explain to the Troll, how a blogger chooses to run his/her blog:

The Troll had already lost his argument, when I linked to the IOM report on Calcium/Vitamin D supplements and treatment of breast cancer up thread and Troll was too lazy or too cheap to purchase the 1,100 page IOM report

The new reference values are based on much more information and higher-quality studies than were available when the values for these nutrients were first set in 1997. The committee assessed more than one thousand studies and reports and listened to testimony from scientists and stakeholders before making its conclusions. It reviewed a range of health outcomes, including but not limited to cancer, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, falls, immune response, neuropsychological functioning, physical performance, preeclampsia, and reproductive outcomes. This thorough review found that information about the health benefits beyond bone health—benefits often reported in the media—were from studies that provided often mixed and inconclusive results and could not be considered reliable. However, a strong body of evidence from rigorous testing substantiates the importance of vitamin D and calcium in promoting bone growth and maintenance….”

The scat-talking mentally unstable Troll has a history of posting filthy misogynistic remarks at women on blogs. His use of the pejorative “retard” word is a new low…even for this crank blogger:

Aren’t you being unreasonable in expecting newbies to use Blockquoting, considering that there is neither a button to implement it, nor instructions on how to do it?

Yes and no. I get your point, and perhaps it would have been better to have suggested you use blockquote (I believe the original request simply said “quoting” which doesn’t really differentiate it much from using html vs simply copying the comment) outright.

However, it is just as easy to point out that you have your own blog and one might presume you have basic html under your belt.

It’s also pretty commonly used on many commenting systems and in forums, so one could expect that if you’re here you might have also seen it elsewhere.

I will also state that as suggested, it’s not that hard to google for how to do it. In fact, that’s how I learned html, css, php and any number of other languages. I’m not a programmer, web designer, IT person, engineer, or anything like that.
(Although as a non-scientist, but as someone who does some ‘building’, I am not silly enough to think that “working out problems for real world solutions” can translate into “being able to understand and criticise methodology of papers which involve complicated statistics”)

So whilst I agree with you that it’s kind of unfair to expect people to use proper quoting because it assumes a level of familiarity with the internet that some people don’t have, I don’t agree with you that it’s all that hard to figure out once you’ve been asked nicely to try it. 🙂

Shame about some of the commenters! As long as I don’t get banned for giving as good as (or worse than) I get.

You’re one up on the last guy that got banned. He refused to use proper quoting, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and repeatedly posted walls of text to the point it was spamming.

So yeah, you’ve got quite a way to go before getting banned.

I prefer to link to stuff that I’ve already written about, but my last attempt to add a link to my blog put the comment in pre-mod.

That happens the first time anyone puts in a link. It’s happened to me, and it still happens on occasion when I put in too many. If you want to add links without sticking in the spam filter, remove the http: // bit and any www’s and it generally goes through ok.

I use html in comments on other blogs, mainly “a href=” and “b”, so using “blockquote” isn’t a problem (unless I mis-type it).

Proving my point for me, re: assuming that you may actually have some coding knowledge already and it’s not big leap to assume that blockquote is already familiar to you.

But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere and the only two things I knew for several years was how to code a link and do bold… so I know how you feel.

By the way, resorting to ad hominems not exactly helping your argument about politeness.

Also, if someone can kindly point Nigel towards the thread a while back where we discussed newbies jumping into conversations without getting to know the tone… that would be great. I can never find threads when I need them!

@Johnny

Oh, I’m quite familiar with the Straight Dope. I used to be an avid reader of that stuff about 10 or so years ago. I never really spent time in the forums though and unfortunately don’t have the time to go back these days, but it’s right in there with my bookmarks, along with Bad Science’s forums and many others for which I end up spending whole weeks reading 🙂

@crazy cat lady: I’m glad you quoted text from Eddie Mitchell’s site, as I’m currently taking legal action against him for malicious defamation. I’m not kidding.

He started the insults, as his advice is harmful. I merely responded to his insults in full insult mode, so don’t go taking anything on that site as meaningful, you P.O.S.

All you ever do here is carp & criticise and tear people down. You add nothing of any value to this blog whatsoever. You’re a horrible, worthless individual and I’m going to insult you constantly, until you “do the right thing”. Got it? Good!

Denice Walter: No need to explain to the Troll, how a blogger chooses to run his/her blog:

The Troll had already lost his argument, when I linked to the IOM report on Calcium/Vitamin D supplements and treatment of breast cancer up thread and Troll was too lazy or too cheap to purchase the 1,100 page IOM report.

So the IOM is God, is it? Maybe you should read the Cochrane report on Vitamin D and cancer. There’s a link to it on my blog, but you’re too intellectually-lazy to bother looking for anything other than evidence that fits your narrow-minded little agenda. You’re as bad as the alt-med bunch. You see what you want to see and disregard the rest.

Aren’t you being unreasonable in expecting newbies to use Blockquoting, considering that there is neither a button to implement it, nor instructions on how to do it?

Yes and no. I get your point, and perhaps it would have been better to have suggested you use blockquote (I believe the original request simply said “quoting” which doesn’t really differentiate it much from using html vs simply copying the comment) outright.

On forums, there are instructions. This is a blog, so there are no instructions. Would it be possible for the boss or blog admin to add a graphic at the top of the page containing a request that blockquoting be used and how to do it? That would be a great help.

@Nigel
By the way, resorting to ad hominems not exactly helping your argument about politeness.

Ad hominem is where someone tries to counter someone’s argument by attacking them instead of their argument. I’m just lobbing worse insults back at people who threw them at me first. There’s a subtle difference. If lilady stops insulting me, I’ll stop insulting her. Simples!

And I get angry when I see people like you kreboizen spreading untruths about my field.

A frozen fish pie is NOT a good source of nutrition and the dietitian is not better educated than me

At least when I make statements I am not making assumptions about yo and your level of education. You are very clearly not educated in the fields of nutrition and health so it would be best if it stick to your own field.

The whole point is I don’t spread misinformation. And I certain,y don’t tell people I can cure cancer.

It would be a lot more ethical if oncologists didn’t make such huge promises

Anyway you are a complete idiot did you thnk you can shut off about people you don’t know. Therapies you don’t understand and make insinuations about what I am doing with those therapies. I breaks my heart that I can’t do more and like I said even with my mum the only promise I made is that i Will never give up on her.

You are insensitive and thoughtless and I would kindly thank you not to make judgements on what I am doing. You now nothing. And to be perfectly honest I do research my field through,y and look at double blind studies done with essential oils. All medicine comes originally from natural sources ore replicating elements of them so you clearly don’t do enough research. Anyway that’s as close to a judgement as I am gong to make on you and only because you are making disgusting insinuations about what I am Doing and none of what’d you say is true. You area complete idiot

Really. Am I ? And what am I spreading ? What do I tell them ? Do I tell them chemo can help them then put them through two rounds and go oops your fucked now and we don’t know what to do with you so go home and your daughter can look atfter you with no help from anyone financially and no job. Hmmm pretty fucked

I don’t do that

Do I tell people they can eat frozen fish pies to improve their health? No.

I don’t spread lies nor do I spread hope. Don’t you think I would have wanted to do that with my mum. I did everything. I could but I never spread hope.

People actually think that chemo works. It doesn’t work it destroys and if you are lucky enough it will destroy cancer and you might be lucky enough to survive it if you are healthy enough.

When you can prove that chemo works get back to me until then don’t you dare tell me what I do you don’t have a fucking clue what I do

And by the way it sounds like you are telling people not to bother with a healthy life style or nutrition because they will get cancer anyway so be really careful of the damage you are doing to people’s lives with that misinformation you spiteful idiot

Your last post was not approved because all the f-bombs in it triggered my filters. The difference is, this time I didn’t manually approve it. No more f-bombs. I’ve already been too easy on you for that. I’ve deleted the last two of your comments instead of approving them because they both contained f-bombs. I can tolerate the occasional…spicy language, but yours is not occasional.

The frequency and hostility of your comments have in my estimation surpassed the threshold for flooding the thread, or, as it’s sometimes called, threadjacking. Tone it down and settle it down or you’re gone. You complain about my not moderating. I rarely have to do much moderating. Well, I’m moderating now, thanks to your obtuseness.

And by the way that’s not a lot of money to charge in the spa industry for training In treatments and safe use if oils. Guess how many of those I have done this year? None, because I don’t find it overly satisfying anymore, so I don’t have any money right now. I really hope that you are happy to be causing someone pain because I seriously don’t you are doing anything worthwhile with your life Edith prickly. What an appropriate name for someone that likes to hurt others

I’m so done you people are not out to help anyone just create and spread lies. Yes you can spy on me from your glass houses and make comments and try to drag me down but you really just make me happy I don’t have such horrid people in m life. It’s such a poor show when you have more interest in spying on me twisting everything into something that works for your pathetic little comments and on top of that making comments about my mum. You are sick people.

Narad if all you have to offer is to abuse me the. Good on you. Keep stalking me and making up lies about me. That’s really really big and clever of you. I have not come on here making claims about what I do. It’s all of it that have dragged it up and made it mean something that even I don’t make it mean. Go back and read my actual comments if you want but don’t abuse my background when your too scared to even post you real name throwing I your two Cents. It makes you look like an idiot.

What does a degree I did years ago have to do with you all making abusive comments about things that I don’t even do, like making claims t cure cancer. Like I said over and of again if I could do that don’t you think I would have told my mum that the used it on her?

My prose efforts narad the nark. Are because I am upset and typing on an iPad. I am upset at the lies the abuse and now the stalking and using of information about me for your own vile agenda. It is disgusting behaviour and if this infringes on my life I will be contacting the police

Lisa, would you please calm down; no one is stalking you and althought I’m at the end of a long day (with heavy-duty physical work) with less focusing ability, I didn’t notice anything which could be construed as stalking behavior.

Alright, Lisa, you now join Nigel on my list. You’re flooding the comments. Someone makes one comment; you make four. I don’t care what you’re using. If you can’t use an iPad properly, then don’t make my readers suffer for it. Got it? And I don’t care if I piss you off telling you this.

Here’s the deal. If you and Nigel don’t decrease the number of posts, I’ll decrease them for you.

Nigel wanted moderation. He (and you) both get it. If you and he can’t settle down, I’ll do it for you.

To those who are anonymously abusing me over on Facebook and Skype I have contacted the AFP. You know who you are.
I have not done anything other than have an opinion so your efforts to. ” bring me down ” will be thwarted.

I have always and will always have an interest in health and helping people and also cancer. I will continue to practice with integrity and will never make claims to heal or cure anyone from cancer as was the case with my darling mum, unless by some miracle i actually have a answer. I will continue to have hope. I will continue to help people in the ways that are within my power and training to do so and wihtout ego ( there is enough of that in here) And to all of you on here who think that by spreading lies about what I am doing, abusing me or making derrogatory comments about my mum and her journey ith cancer will change any of that good luck to you. At least I will be able to hold my head up and know that nothing you have endeavoured to attack me with on here is actually the truth.

Mmmm interesting to note orac that all of the abuse towards me and comments about me that are untrue and not referencing my comments properly and using personal things like the death of my mum again me have gone completely unmoderated. It’s clear what your agenda is . However I will not tolerate abuse of me or my family or infringements on personal life

#249 “You are very clearly not educated in the fields of nutrition and health so it would be best if it stick to your own field.”

Ahahahah! Sorry, you just said that to a registered nurse.

#251 And by the way it sounds like you are telling people not to bother with a healthy life style or nutrition because they will get cancer anyway so be really careful of the damage you are doing to people’s lives with that misinformation you spiteful idiot

That’s actually true. People often get cancer despite living healthy. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. I wish it weren’t true, but there you have it.

Should I be rethinking this, science-based folks? Is there something else I should use instead? I just like the smell and I have somewhat sensitive skin, so dumping perfumes in isn’t a great idea.

#259 “Yes you can spy on me from your glass houses and make comments and try to drag me down but you really just make me happy I don’t have such horrid people in m life.”

Um… the thing is, no one said anything about any part of your life that wasn’t posted publicly. If you don’t want people to know about these things, perhaps it would be best not to post them online for all to see?

#261 “I’m having an awfully hard time reconciling your prose efforts with a B.A. in Communication and Media Studies.”

I’m not. In my college Communications was a cakewalk major. I don’t even think most of them studied at all. Compare that to philosophy, where your test was three questions long and took you every single precious second of the time period to finish, after having studied intensively for days…

Oh, and Lisa, wondering if there was anything to what you said, I located your Facebook profile, and what did I find? You posting this:

I have a lot of people from over on a science blog called respectful insolence who are infiltrating my Facebook pages and blog and spreading lies about me and how I promote myself. I apologise if this has any adverse affect on my friends, family, or any of the FB fans. They are trying to incorrectly assert that I am promoting unfounded natural treatments and therapies for cancer. Which as any of you that know me know that I do not do. They have even descended into making comments about my mum who died from cancer 3 years ago. I am so sorry to have to post this and want you to let me know if any of this affects any of you and if needed I can get it stopped. Love to you all xxx

#270 “However I will not tolerate abuse of me or my family or infringements on personal life”

Um… you posted it online. You posted it. I’m sorry if this was a mistake, but if it was, it was yours to make, I’m afraid. For what it’s worth, I am sorry about your mother’s death. However, I believe you are wrong to blame this on her doctors. Again, sometimes bad things happen to good people, and while it would be wonderful to live in a magical rainbow-strewn world where every case of cancer can be cured or prevented, unfortunately, that’s not reality.

Maybe your family got a bad oncologist. Or maybe you are misremembering what your oncologist said. Most of the time cancer doctors don’t tell you “There is a 100 percent chance I will cure you.” They tell you “Your chances are better this way than without chemo/radiation/surgery.” Then they will often cite you the odds.

Here’s the deal. If you and Nigel don’t decrease the number of posts, I’ll decrease them for you.

Nigel wanted moderation. He (and you) both get it. If you and he can’t settle down, I’ll do it for you.

I apologise for posting too many comments. In my defence, I’ve had comments made to me by many posters, to which I’ve replied. I wish to complain about lilady, who has posted nothing but abusive comments to me. I’ll shut up now and leave you in peace.

I’ve had just about enough of your crap. I’ve threatened nobody. I’ve been banned from nowhere. Mitchell threatened me and I phoned Hampshire Police because of it. He’s a serial bully and he’s bragged about it on his blog.

Calling you a twat and a retard has nothing to do with your gender, so you can drop the misogynist garbage. I called you those names because you are a disgrace to humanity. You hide behind the anonymity of your keyboard because you are a coward. People like you disgust me. I’ve told you more than once to go away and leave me alone. Now stop harassing me on here.

MY Firs COMMENT – i can see how you would be totally offended by such a question…..???????????!!!!!!!

“I3C doesn’t suppress BRCA1 expression. Rather, it increases it. ”

I am interested in the above comment and have never heard that in either medical or holistic therapy circles please can you explain and tell me where you get your info from as it is a component of cruciferous vegetables your comment is very confusing and I would be interested to research if further if you can explain.

el burto ( with her own version of ‘the truth’) “Ah, so the truth is out then. Lisa’s flailing is due to her “professional interest”. Colour me shocked that there’s an agenda at stake, and money to be made by dissuading vulnerable people from seeking real treatment.” ………really where is my agenda then and how exactly am i making money out of vulnerable people? proof please? i barely even treat people these days and if I do its in spa or massage clinic , its what i did for 15 years andyes i have treated people who have or have had cancer but not to cure them , to assist them with symptoms and i don’t go looking for them they come and ask me, if they want help I offer and I DONT make claims ever – stop lumping me with other people you have expericence of.

FLIP

“Perhaps this is why people here aren’t polite. People post with agendas and tend to lie about their own situation in order to make them seem like sympathetic JAQ-offs all the while making those who are skeptical of claims appear like mean brutes.” LIE about my situation – you think i would lie about going through what I went through!!!!

and flip again…
“Looking at Lisa’s site for a moment, I worry about the whole “the type of client I want to work with is…” page. That’s some weird stuff. I’d agree with you that it’s a little like she couldn’t make up her mind as to what she wanted to do with her life. (Er, not that I can talk really)

Also, who takes social media marketing advice from someone who has a google page rank of 0 and a facebook like of the oh-so-amazing 63?

Only one of my twitter accounts has roughly 100 times as many followers and I don’t go out of my way to build it.

I hope she’s better at altmed than she is at social media advice. (Er, you know what I mean” Again any particular reason why you are personally judging me and what you THINK I am doing. ? All of that stuff is brand new! I only just put it up a couple of months ago and have been working on other peoples businesses because I need to earn a living and am totally entitled to do so with out abusers making judgements on me.

Narad
“Actually cancer never affects healthy people.

It affects people who SAY they are healthy but actually have no idea about nutrition.

As it happens, this is the sixth yahrtzeit of my best friend, z”l, a well-known figure at rec.food.veg.cooking and in myriad other circles who succumbed to colon cancer without ever seeing his second son.

If you ever decide to lay the load of blobovian nonsense in your head to rest, Lisa, I recommend using the shovel right side up.” EXTREMELY ABUSIVE and THREATENING and VIOLENT comment

Lilady

“Aromatherapist, Lisa? I’ve been smelling your horsesh!t “aroma”, since your first post.” really intelligent comment and response and again meaning what? that I am spreading lies about cancer , NO , wrong again

and lilady again with the personal attacking and abuse
lilady,

“Scroll down to her third tweet/link to Mikey’s vile, libelous post about Angelina Jolie:

It’s linked on her FB page as well, and she says it is, “very confronting and very interesting. well worth reading and considering”. Linking to that revolting garbage is “Wholehearted Inspiration on Life, Health, Wealth, and Love”?

Bleugh. Now my imaginary chakras are all screwed up with imaginary negative energy.

agashem

“As for Lisa, you live in a country with government funded health care and yet you claim to have found a significantly cheaper way to treat/ameliorate the effects of cancer and the UK government hasn’t climbed all over that???? Here in Canada, the government would be all over that in a heartbeat and force us to do that first and then the more expensive options. I seriously doubt anything you say.”

I too doubt what you say agashem as none of it is true and i don;t do any of what you say. Again abuse for abuse sake.

Edith prickly
“Nice work, lilady. What a surprise – yet another sCAMster using a loved one’s suffering as a shield for criticism. You sure charge people a lot of money for your “expertise”, Ms Tristram. I’m sorry everyone here has been so rude as to point out that what you are peddling is sheer fantastasy (not a typo – it means a fantasy that’s metastasized and started killing the part of the brain where critical thinking occurs), but you’re the one who barged in here and starting flinging accusations. So kindly pack up your essential oils and flounce back to your sCAM Cloud-Cuckoo land, Professor Trelawney.”

And to those that pointed out I am hiding behind my mum’s death – really nice work that’s very big of you. and not at all abusive ORAC? or do poeple actually have to physically hurt someone before you constitute it abuse.

And the 30 request on skype that I got between yesterday and today on skype? when I never get any because I don’t give it out unless I am working with someone.

and the stats on my blog referred from here so you can make more judgements and wrong opnions and then post and message me on facebook.

nice work – its all going a long way to find a cure for cancer keep it up guys.

I am totally disgusted with you all and when you are all brave enough to share your details with me so I can comment on what you do then you can make comments about me.

Nigel, can you cut it down with the word r*tard? I’ve seen too many autistics being called r*tard which did not warrant the label because they all test very high on the Raven Standard Progressive Matrix (even a non-verbal who tested in the 98th percentile on that test).

I have a lot of friends who are registered nurses and none of them have been trained in Nutrition – i am sorry if you have taken offence at that comment Khani but you are not trained in nutrition you are trained in nursing. It is a very noble profession and sadly underpaid for what you see and do.

Actually, I suspect that depends on their specialty. I suspect lilady could tell us more, but I do know that home health RNs do indeed get trained pretty extensively in nutrition, because they pass that on to their patients.

Your knowledge of *nutrition* is abominable and you have a high opinion of yourself which is not shared by anyone on the internet, including the posters on this site.

You are a real sicko who gets his *jollies* by telling people to f*ck off and by degrading women on the internet by calling them twats. You definitely cyberstalked someone on the internet and made a not-so-veiled threat about burning down their house:

You were provided with some excellent links to studies about Vitamin D/Calcium treatment for cancer; I provided you with a link to the 1,100 page IOM report and its commentary about the poorly constructed studies (including Lappe’s), as well as a link to Orac’s blog on your *pet unproven fixation*.

BTW Troll, my son was born with an exceedingly rare genetic disorder which caused profound, multiple physical, intellectual and health impairments. He was the joy of my life for the 28 years he fought to survive.

Many of the posters on this site have children and siblings who have developmental disabilities, and/or, have been diagnosed as autistic. Would you believe that some of the posters you insulted here, are autistic?

So your use of the word “retard” is extremely offensive to all of us, including those posters who aren’t autistic and who don’t have beloved family members, who are intellectually/developmentally impaired.

Get some professional help for your anger issues and your narcissistic personality disorder….you desperately need it.

Earlier today, I took a fellow over to the waterside because those places may elevate our morose moods: we drove past the quiet lesser bay that runs into the distant greater bay and beyond the running river to the sea itself:
grey waves fell upon grey sandy strands beneath a glowering, low ,weeping sky of pewter shot through with silver ribbons.. the eternal, dark spirited northern ocean where ….

Oh hello. Sorry about that.

It seems that a few visitors are not at all happy with the sprightly minions of RI. I wonder why?

Well, I could OBVIOUSLY make a few noises myself but I am rather tired from my journey…
HOWEVER..
just a quick one before I drop off..
I notice the word “coaching” on Ms Tristam’s page and wonder just that entails.
Is that something like … hmm.. counselling or therapy?
Just curious about that…

Lisa, what we are saying is not that you are malicious–just that you are flat-out wrong. So-called “alternative” treatments do not improve anyone’s chance of surviving a cancer. Surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy have been proven to help. There is no more evidence in favor of aromatherapy having any positive effect than there is in favor of prayer (and I say this as a Catholic).

We are saying that, whatever you want to achieve, you are accomplishing nothing by peddling smells. If you really want to help reduce human suffering, you should study one of the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine), find work at either a government- or NGO-funded research laboratory or with a pharmaceutical company, and work on an actual bloody cure.

You might not have the competence for those fields. Sadly, most people don’t. It’s a lot of hard work–years of it. It’s suffering and pain in the name of getting something done. It’s not the easy way to feeling good. If that’s the case, then find a high-paying job you can do and funnel your income into donations to medical institutions.

Either of those paths would be much more productive than so-called ‘alternative’ therapies, which have no evidence in their favor at all. Those who sell ‘alternative’ cures have the net effect of diverting wealth that the patient could use for either finding a functioning treatment, enjoying their limited remaining time, or giving to their relatives or other institution, into their own pockets. Such snake-oil peddlers–whose ranks you appear to be among, as an aromatherapist–don’t do any good for anyone but themselves, no matter how much they delude themselves.

Also, what is your particular complaint about fish? Why do you feel that fish cannot be healthy?

I have a lot of *colleagues* who are Registered Dieticians (not the so-called, self-declared *nutritionist*). I also have a lot of colleagues who are Registered Nurses, Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Chemists, Biologists and Physicians, whose knowledge of nutrition and dietetics, put you to shame compared to your knowledge.

no need to be curious dennis don’t waste your time. you have no interest in what i do and I am done with the personal abuse on here. i actually thought ( insanely !) that I might get some knowledge information or answers on here but really all I have to show is a bunch of people now more interesting in spouting shit about me and making personal comments on stuff they know nothing about and have no interest in knowing anything about.

i took on coaching last year when people with massage businesses and day spas asked me to because I have done it for 15 years and they wanted to share in my expertise. It has nothing to do with cancer or attempting to cure cancer so you don’t need to stress out and start posting a heap of lies about me . It has to do with my job which is also is about helping people to live better lives and enjoy what they do and make sure they are running a great business that is helping people and NOT going outside the bounds of any laws or protocols. Something you are clearly not interested in on here . But go ahead keep trolling through my stuff and making comments. People are dying and suffereing as we speak but clearly that does not bother you as you are all more interested in bringing me down and being hateful

YOu are all morons that have no interest in helping people at all only spreading hate , fear and bringing people down. keep it up your doing a great job.

and once again all of your comments about diverting wealth from poeples treatments – you are not reading my comments . i have not and have never encouraged anyone including my own MOTHER from having and kind of pharmaceutical treatments

they actually are Khani and full of active consituents that are acutally replicated in many pharmaceuticals so it shows how much you know about that.

This is just soooooooooo ridiclous. go back to resolving the issue with BRCA gene people and leave me alone you are not interested in what I do you don’t care what I say you certainly don’t give a shit about what I have suffered. so go a back to doing whatever the hell you were trying to do with this blog

“Lisa, what we are saying is not that you are malicious–just that you are flat-out wrong”

and what I am saying is I don’t even have the opportunity to find our if you are right or wrong because you are all so malicous.

I have already spent way too long defending myself against your untruths and spiteful comments and the funniest thing is I don’t peddle cures or do any of the things you have suggested about me. its actually funny.

I really hope that you are happy to be causing someone pain because I seriously don’t you are doing anything worthwhile with your life Edith prickly. What an appropriate name for someone that likes to hurt others

Oh don’t give yourself the vapours, Miss Melly. Go chew on some wheatgrass and sniff some ylang-ylang oil until you feel better.

I’ll remind you again that nobody here would know anything about your mother if you hadn’t brought it up in your very first comment, and now you’re blubbering crocodile tears about how ‘mean’ everyone’s been about it. Using a deceased person as a human shield is extremely distasteful, dear.

I’ve been reading the thread as it progressed and people were actually quite generous to you at first. My sCAM detector went off early but I figured you deserved the benefit of the doubt until further evidence presented itself. Anyway, now that you’ve been revealed as yet another pusher of foofy nonsense about magic oils and foods, the teeth and claws are coming out. Seriously, just step away from the computer and go to bed.

I thanked those people and notice they are no longer commenting as part of the vile insufferable crew the rest of y have formed and are now justifying.

How dare you say I used my mum as a shield. Vile disgusting excuse for a human being you so deserve everything you get for that comment and I seriously doubt your life is full of love and happiness with that attitude

Don’t even talk to me about essential oils until you have read some papers on them.

Well, I would if you post some links to them. I tried search the author you mentioned upthread in PubMed, but I got too many hits, and you didn’t provide enough information for me to narrow the search.

However, before you do, I’d like to suggest that you might benefit from a few hours away from the internet and a little bit of rest. Please take this in the spirit intended: it’s not abuse. Just a little friendly advice.

I don’t have any beliefs about natural cures, if I did I would and do use them.

Once again you comment and throw stuff around without actually reading what I said. My mum had chemo, I stood by her, do you not think that if I had a cure I would have said ” hey mum I have a different idea lets go do that instead” but I didn’t

Your pathetic attempts at sympathy are falling on deaf ears, you can’t fake that stuff and use it as a defence against your desire to really just hurt people. Get out there and make an actual difference with people rather than trying to find bull shit to put on me. The funny thing is you just make huge generalisations about me and nothing you have said s far is actually true. God help the people around you I feel sorry for them if this is how you treat people

Tell that to your pack of dogs and tell them to post something useful and. Might actually learn something chemomo,

Edith how about the behaviour of you lot trawling to try to find something on me!!! You are literally insane – go back and read the comments and tell me why it started getting personal against me, what I do, who I am and now having attacks through Skype and Facebook

If you people put as much energy into collaborating and supporting people you might actually do something significant.

I asked a question I spoke of my experiences , yes very passionately and out of grief sometimes, I did not get personally abusive . I now find myself defending attacks over things I have never even said or done like claiming a natural cure for cancer !!! Seriously you think that’s fair, and making jibes about the death of my mum,really, are you even a human being ?

Wow! For my sins, I’ve read this entire thread, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen so much concentrated insanity, even when augustine and thingy were tag-teaming every thread.

Lisa, I’ve read every comment, both by you and to you, and if you think anyone has made “jibes” about the death of your mother, you are laboring under some form of powerful delusion.

Narad mentioned that it was the sixth anniversary of the death of his vegetarian friend from colon cancer, and your reaction was:

EXTREMELY ABUSIVE and THREATENING and VIOLENT comment

This is not the reaction of a sane person. I really think you need to take a break from fighting with the voices in your head (because you’re certainly not interacting in a reality-based manner with anything anyone has said here), chill out for a while, and as soon as you can, try to find some help with your issues—because you have been the one to escalate a nonexistent conflict into a frankly insane series of ravings.

Nigel, I’m not going to offer you any friendly advice—you are quite simply a complete asshole—I can’t imagine going for the first time onto someone else’s blog and behaving like you have here today. Unfortunately, there’s no cure for your kind of problem except a personality transplant.

Was thinking so when she invented her complaints about being harassed on skype and facebook. No troll on the history of RI has ever complained about peoples trying to connect to skype or facebook account of said troll.

Honestly I was just trying to read all your comments. You lot are incorrigible! This is so not helping anyone… We can ‘t engage in this kind of petty discourse …Please post something of value in the comments this is just ridiculous!

Basically, you have barged in and given us a lecture on how we are “incorrigible”and “petty” and our comments are valueless, unhelpful and “ridiculous”. And then you wonder why everyone is SO mean to you. I agree with the others, step away from the computer and chill. Maybe try one of your aromatherapy nostrums. My favourite, BTW, is bacon.

Argh, I come back from a night sleep and find about a hundred more comments to go through. And apparently another troll thinks I’m OK. Maybe I should have told them about how I like to vandalize cancer patients’ graves and giggle when I see the looks on the families’ faces.

Flip @#213:

I actually feel sorry for the stars out there. Bad enough they get hounded by journalists all the time, but they also get to have their personal medical decisions discussed by complete strangers as if they have some right over the starlet’s body parts and what they’re used for.

One Yahoo group I’m on is currently debating whether or not Jolie is a “cutter” (it’s a US-dominated list and I’m guessing they mean a self-harmer). Because, yanno, these female self-harmers always go and have double mastectomies and breast reconstruction surgery just as soon as they can afford it. It’s so much easier than quietly cutting themselves in the bathroom.

Nigel, can you cut it down with the word r*tard? I’ve seen too many autistics being called r*tard which did not warrant the label because they all test very high on the Raven Standard Progressive Matrix (even a non-verbal who tested in the 98th percentile on that test).

Alain

I apologise for and will stop using that word, but lilady has “really got my dander up”. For lilady to play the “misogynist” card twice now, when I made it perfectly clear that I hated her because she was an arsehole and not because she was female, shows what a vile and despicable person she is.

Sorry again for having caused offence, but sometimes in the heat of an argument (which lilady started in the first place), things get said that shouldn’t be said).

#278 “Calling you a twat and a retard has nothing to do with your gender, so you can drop the misogynist garbage. I called you those names because you are a disgrace to humanity.”

Actually, “catlady” is a gendered insult. And “twat” means what it means.

And while we’re at it, could you please stop with the “retard”? It’s kinda ableist.

Thanks!“catlady” was a play on “lilady”. In England, cuss words have a different meaning to that in the US. I appreciate that “twat” is slang for the female front bottom! Please see my reply to Alain. Sorry again.

Lisa: Like several people have told you, step away from the Ipad, take a few deep breaths and use some of that aromatherapy and relaxation stuff on yourself.

And the advice about fish pies was actually very good. What cancer patients need is lot of calories; that’s why some of them use dope, because it stimulates their appetite and makes them crave high-calorie food.
Also, don’t be so quick to diss frozen foods. You can now find high-quality organic frozen foods in lots of places, including some supermarkets. They certainly sell them in my local food co-ops.If you haven’t got one of those near you, try Holland & Barretts, or maybe Waitrose or even Tescos.

That’s the third time that you have played the sexist card, which shows how morally-bereft you are.

I don’t know you. I’m not a mind-reader! Don’t try to play the sympathy card with me. Everyone has had bad experiences in life. If you had bothered to read my blog instead of the cess-pit that is Eddie Mitchell’s (which I see you have referred to yet again), you would have known that my mother died last month after nearly 6 years of Dementia with Lewy Bodies. As a result, after nearly 6 years of being slightly depressed, I am now hyperthymic. That’s for your information only. I’m not after anyone’s sympathy, so don’t you dare suggest that I am.

Look. You and I haven’t got off to the best of starts (understatement of the year). I asked for opinion on the Lappe study. I’ve had rather more opinion than I anticipated. The Lappe study isn’t a badly run study. You obviously have a cognitive bias against Vitamin D for some reason. I have a cognitive bias towards Vitamin D, as my experience of taking 5,000iu/day has been nothing but positive. As you would know if you had read my blog.

Anyway, I’ve said what I came here to say. Once again, I have to say that I really didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.

I can’t believe that nobody here has made the obvious reply “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”. Has someone done this joke here before? I’m new here (like you hadn’t noticed).

Can you please chill? I’m not here to argue with anyone. However, I am perfectly capable of arguing, if that’s what you really want. What do you really want?

He started the insults, as his advice is harmful. I merely responded to his insults in full insult mode, so don’t go taking anything on that site as meaningful, you P.O.S.

Sheesh, way to take the high road.

On forums, there are instructions. This is a blog, so there are no instructions. Would it be possible for the boss or blog admin to add a graphic at the top of the page containing a request that blockquoting be used and how to do it? That would be a great help.

You’re mistaking forums for working the same way blogs do. I don’t expect each and every blog to post html instructions, no. Why? Because a lot of commenting systems don’t allow html, a lot only use a little bit of it, many don’t allow posting of URLs, and there are some that use BBcode and not html. Even then, which html code would you include, because it’s not like there’s only a few commands or anything.

Seriously, if you want to be spoon fed info, this isn’t the place for it. It took me 2 seconds to google blockquote code yesterday in an attempt to find a decent way to explain it.

The site “let me google that for you” was obviously made with people like you in mind.

Ad hominem is where someone tries to counter someone’s argument by attacking them instead of their argument. I’m just lobbing worse insults back at people who threw them at me first. There’s a subtle difference. If lilady stops insulting me, I’ll stop insulting her. Simples!

I don’t see the difference, sorry. And as I said, asking for politeness whilst throwing names isn’t doing your argument any favours. Ignore whoever you think is insulting you and get back to the discussion about vitamins.

@Lilady

Thank you!

@ARD

Also, what is your particular complaint about fish? Why do you feel that fish cannot be healthy?

I think it’s the fact that it’s a frozen pie that has her annoyed. Quite clearly good nutrition is not pre-packaged food with preservatives, etc. You know, the usual malarky when it comes to modern food.

@Sophia8

One Yahoo group I’m on is currently debating whether or not Jolie is a “cutter” (it’s a US-dominated list and I’m guessing they mean a self-harmer). Because, yanno, these female self-harmers always go and have double mastectomies and breast reconstruction surgery just as soon as they can afford it. It’s so much easier than quietly cutting themselves in the bathroom.

Sounds like projection to me.

.If you haven’t got one of those near you, try Holland & Barretts, or maybe Waitrose or even Tescos.

Nigel, I’m not going to offer you any friendly advice—you are quite simply a complete asshole—I can’t imagine going for the first time onto someone else’s blog and behaving like you have here today. Unfortunately, there’s no cure for your kind of problem except a personality transplant.

You’re entitled to your opinion. I obviously disagree. I can’t believe the amount of hostility that I’ve been shown for asking for an opinion on an RCT. What is it with so many people on here? I appreciate that cancer is an emotive subject, but FFS! No other blog that I post on is like this one for hostility. It’s a shame, because this could have been a really great blog but for all of the petty squabbling that goes on here.

Sorry, yet again. I think that I’ve now run out of people to apologise to, so I’ll say cheerio and good luck!

When you can prove that chemo works get back to me until then don’t you dare tell me what I do you don’t have a fucking clue what I do

Ah, the nirvana fallacy, nice to see you again.

And by the way it sounds like you are telling people not to bother with a healthy life style or nutrition because they will get cancer anyway so be really careful of the damage you are doing to people’s lives with that misinformation you spiteful idiot

Oh so you didn’t read the post, nor the comments that followed? The ones that outright said that nutrition and ‘living healthy’ actually is important and is used by doctors; but *won’t* cure cancer no matter how much you believe in it?

Keep stalking me and making up lies about me.

It’s not stalking, but rather finding the *publicly available* information you yourself have posted. Learn how the internet works will you please?

It is probably asking to much, but why not share the high quality double-blind studies you have read? All we ask for is high quality evidence showing effectiveness.

Spoken by Stewart1982, repeated for truthiness. Instead of screaming blue murder at us, you can shut us all up by posting the evidence that naturopathy etc works.

Stewart I didn’t come on here for this abuse so go do your own research.

Ah yes, the old “I just know what I know” canard. Translated to read: “I don’t really use evidence, I just go by my own personal experiences of what works”.

I am interested in the above comment and have never heard that in either medical or holistic therapy circles please can you explain and tell me where you get your info from as it is a component of cruciferous vegetables your comment is very confusing and I would be interested to research if further if you can explain.

Have you tried following the links provided in the actual post?

It is disgusting behaviour and if this infringes on my life I will be contacting the police

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH! Good luck with that. I’m one state over than you in the same country, and I can tell you right now the police have no resources to deal with actual death threats (as sent to me via email and forum posts) so good luck getting them interested in “oh no, someone on the internet hurt my fee fees”. The AFP have better things to do with their time, especially since you know, the people who post here are not all in the same country as you and get to enjoy American freedom of speech laws.

Govern yourself accordingly, huh?

It’s clear what your agenda is . However I will not tolerate abuse of me or my family or infringements on personal life

People have questioned your ideas, not your mother. People have questioned your usage of altmed, not your personal life. People have questioned your statements about cancer and who it affects, not your grief. People have questioned your lack of/evidence, not your personal family decisions.

Oh yeah, and I’ve criticised your ability to hold yourself out as a social media guru. That’s not talking about your personal life, that’s looking at your own social media and wondering whether or not to do business with you. It’s no different than walking into a pizza place and wondering why the pizza place down the road does better business than you.

LIE about my situation – you think i would lie about going through what I went through!!!!

There are indeed people who lie, and I did not actually call you a liar. No, what I did was suggest that by hiding your conflict of interest, you potentially damage your own case at garnering sympathy or being viewed as someone who is interested in following the truth. You do a good job of painting yourself the martyr, which is also something that altmedders try to do using FUD. I’m not saying you do that, I’m just pointing out similarities which hurt your case.

Furthermore, it is yet another example of altmedders being hypocrites when it comes to calling scientists shills and people who hide their conflicts.

You may not have done it on purpose; that doesn’t mean I can’t point to it as an example.

All of that stuff is brand new! I only just put it up a couple of months ago and have been working on other peoples businesses because I need to earn a living and am totally entitled to do so with out abusers making judgements on me.

See above. It’s usually a good idea to wait until you personally or your business has lots of stuff on social media, because that helps sell you as a social media guru. See the pizza place analogy. I don’t go buy pizza from the pizzeria if they have a couple of loaves of garlic bread in the window and empty shelves; I go buy from the place that’s packed out and always has pizza on display.

By the way, I’m an artist and currently on the dole at that, so I am not criticising anything other than your stated ability and not your financial wealth or your need to feed yourself. I can *totally* understand the frustration, and I also know how upsetting it can be to have your business practices criticised. However, I was commenting in the context of someone else finding it confusing that you might offer services for free to others in your profession. And if you missed it: *I was defending you in that context*. Try scrolling up and reading what I wrote about it.

I’m fine with you offering your services to your fellow altmedders. However I am not convinced you’d have much to offer because your own stats show you haven’t built much of an audience yourself. A new pizzeria that has nothing on display and everyone is at the other place down the road? Yeah, I’m not going to consider them knowledgeable about how to sell pizza, even if they do offer up the advice for free.

Note the word convinced: this is a science site and I am a skeptic. I am *skeptical* of your ability to offer such marketing advice. Feel free to point me in the direction of older social media accounts that you have that would convince me otherwise. Data always changes my mind.

I am totally disgusted with you all and when you are all brave enough to share your details with me so I can comment on what you do then you can make comments about me. [snip] when you all want to stop being cowards then send me your links and i will see what you are all doing under your anonymous psuedonyms.

Amazingly enough, science and effective and safe treatments is not based on personalities, personal experiences, degrees, authority or knowing people’s real names. Effective and safe treatments work whether you know my name or not. Try posting some evidence instead of screaming and you might actually get a polite discussion. Why? Because data matters, and authority doesn’t. If your evidence or argument is logical and backed up with more than “because I just know” we might listen to what you have to say.

In fact, if you’d just shut up about people abusing you and posted some questions or some evidence to back you up, nobody would be talking about your personal history anymore. We’d be back to discussing health topics.

Don’t even talk to me about essential oils until you have read some papers on them.

Post some evidence about your cancer claims or go away. It’s not up to us to find your evidence for you.

and what I am saying is I don’t even have the opportunity to find our if you are right or wrong because you are all so malicous.

POST YOUR OWN EVIDENCE. Nobody is stopping you from doing that. My advice to Nigel goes to you too: ignore the people insulting you, and just start discussing the evidence for/against whatever issue you originally wanted to talk about.

You need to learn the difference between criticism and tyranny. No one here has threatened your life, your wellbeing, or anything else. They’ve just questioned your ideas and statements. Go read the comment I linked to about not responding kindly to special snowflake arguments.

You’re seriously stuck on the “love, happiness and puppies” record by the way, despite obviously needing a chill pill.

Go relax, come back with some evidence, and we will all behave like rational people.

I was wrong. There’s one more person.
@flip: Sorry that things got out of hand. This is the only blog where this has happened. Is the problem with me, or is it with this blog? IMO, it’s the latter, so goodbye.

Can people please stop leaving comments aimed at me, unless it’s an acknowledgement. I don’t want to have to leave any more comments on here – ever.

You’re entitled to your opinion. I obviously disagree. I can’t believe the amount of hostility that I’ve been shown for asking for an opinion on an RCT. What is it with so many people on here? I appreciate that cancer is an emotive subject, but FFS! No other blog that I post on is like this one for hostility. It’s a shame, because this could have been a really great blog but for all of the petty squabbling that goes on here.

I haven’t commented because I’m not a scientist or medical researcher or doctor and won’t offer opinions on something I don’t know anything about.

I do believe you received opinions on it, but they weren’t to your liking and then you got huffy when people requested you post more links instead of redirecting them to trawl through your site for answers.

Sorry, I don’t see what you’re upset about. Further up I explained how you can ‘beat’ the URL filter so you don’t get moderated and you can post links to your site. If you wanted to continue the conversation here, maybe you could, I don’t know, stop telling people not to reply here?

Or you know, posting more replies to the opinions given instead of going on about catladys?

It’s your own fault for simply avoiding the conversation. And what was my very first advice to you? That if you avoid the conversation you will get bounced.

Stick the flounce this time, or else I suggest you come back with actual evidence or discussion of the evidence; not invective.

It seems almost everywhere I go these days on the internet, I find Nigel hurling foul mouthed abuse at posters or trying to extricate himself from arguments and back tracking on threats he has made. In my humble opinion the man is one wave short of a ship wreck and best avoided.

And I get angry when I see people like you kreboizen spreading untruths about my field.

What untruths are those? Am I putting vulnerable, sick people’s health and lives at risk? Or just your income.

A frozen fish pie is NOT a good source of nutrition and the dietitian is not better educated than me

In what way is a fish pie not a good source of nutrition for a person with cancer who may have a poor appetite? Malnutrition is a common problem in cancer, and getting them to eat some food with carbohydrate, fats and protein in it may be very important.

Also, how does the fact the fish pie was “frozen” make the slightest difference? Seriously, why do you believe that? I suspect you believe in some sort of life force that is depleted by cooking or freezing foods, a belief that is very common in alternative health circles, despite there being no scientific evidence for it whatsoever.

At least when I make statements I am not making assumptions about yo and your level of education. You are very clearly not educated in the fields of nutrition and health so it would be best if it stick to your own field.

I was only going by what you have posted here. My education is a science-based one, yours, from what I have read, is not.

The whole point is I don’t spread misinformation..

Yet you have made statements like, “cancer never affects healthy people”, and described “scoffing heartily ” at a healthcare professional who actually gave some very good advice. You also suggested that your mother was killed by conventional treatment and stated that “my only regret is not getting her onto the herbs and nutrition quicker”, which surely suggests she would have done better on these than on conventional treatments. Many of the unpleasant symptoms you describe are the consequences of cancer, not the treatment. Many people see their loved ones suffer through terminal cancer, and wrongly assume (thanks in part to misinformation found on the internet) that it was the treatment that caused the suffering, not the disease itself.

Your railing against conventional doctors, who I am sure did their very best for your mother, only makes sense if you believe there is a better alternative treatment for cancer that they could have used but didn’t. Sadly there isn’t. Conventional treatment is the best we have at present, and I am quite sure that any breakthroughs in cancer prevention and treatment will come through science, not through alternative health researchers who blather about energy fields, meridians, chakras, zero point energy and such-like.

And I certain,y don’t tell people I can cure cancer

I’m very glad to hear that, though you do seem to imply it. You do seem to suggest that you can prevent it, though at best lifestyle choices can only reduce the risk. I hope you still encourage screening for cancer, such as mammography and PAP screening, even for people who are so healthy you claim they won’t get cancer.

You also stated that, “In the end it’s love and compassion that makes the biggest difference to people”. I beg to differ. In the end it is effective treatments and palliative care, including adequate pain relief, that make the biggest difference to people living with cancer.

It would be a lot more ethical if oncologists didn’t make such huge promises

Perhaps you had a bad experience with an oncologist, or misunderstood what s/he said (it happens). Oncologists generally give the cold, hard facts about a patient’s prognosis, tending to err on the side of caution, and if there is nothing they can do they will (or should) say so. Aggressive but hopeless treatment of cancer patients at the end of their lives is very often driven by the patient or their relatives, who insist that the doctors do anything they can, and complain that they have “given up” if they provide only palliative care, as they quite rightly should. I think that dying people should be made as comfortable as possible, not tortured with treatments that can at best prolong their suffering a little.

It seems to me it is CAM therapists that often make huge false promises, though they are usually very careful not to do so where it can get them into legal difficulties. I am very glad if you are not one of these.

Anyway you are a complete idiot did you thnk you can shut off about people you don’t know. […]

My response to what you wrote here has nothing at all to do with knowing you or not. I just reread what I wrote, and don’t think it warrants a response like that. I pointed out that what you have stated here is not scientifically accurate, and that in my opinion your profession is a scam unless it restricts itself to helping people to relax and deal with stress. I have read a lot about most alternative therapies, including aromatherapy, as a matter of fact, and that is really all the evidence supports, apart from some antibacterial and antifungal effects that occur at concentrations close to those that cause skin irritation.

And to be perfectly honest I do research my field through,y and look at double blind studies done with essential oils.

On this blog you are expected to support any claims you make with scientific evidence. If you have any evidence that your therapies can help in any way other than relaxation and stress relief, please share. I have had an interest in in natural and alternative therapies for several decades, and have sadly come to the conclusion that none of them are very useful, and many are worse than useless.

All medicine comes originally from natural sources ore replicating elements of them so you clearly don’t do enough research.

I don’t see how that follows. I have done plenty of research on both alternative and conventional medicine. Some herbs, like Aristolochia, were used for centuries before anyone realized that they were killing people by causing cancer. Others are dangerous in their natural form, but can be made safer and more effective by extraction, purification and chemical alterations.

Anyway that’s as close to a judgement as I am gong to make on you and only because you are making disgusting insinuations about what I am Doing and none of what’d you say is true. You area complete idiot

What disgusting insinuations are those? I stated an opinion. If it is wrong, put me straight with some evidence. You linked to Mike Adams nasty and misinformed article about Angelina Jolie, which I think I have every right to express my disgust at. I’ll skip through some of your ranting…

People actually think that chemo works. It doesn’t work it destroys and if you are lucky enough it will destroy cancer and you might be lucky enough to survive it if you are healthy enough. When you can prove that chemo works get back to me until then don’t you dare tell me what I do you don’t have a fucking clue what I do

Prove that chemotherapy works for what? It can be very effective for lymphomas and leukemias, can prolong life in other cancers, and is a valuable adjunct to surgery to prevent recurrence.

How does the fact that there are no effective treatments for some forms of cancer mean that natural therapies are better? It just doesn’t follow.I have known several people who have undergone chemotherapy and told me it wasn’t too bad, and they are alive and well years later.

““I3C doesn’t suppress BRCA1 expression. Rather, it increases it. ””
I am interested in the above comment and have never heard that in either medical or holistic therapy circles please can you explain and tell me where you get your info from as it is a component of cruciferous vegetables your comment is very confusing and I would be interested to research if further if you can explain.

It was me Orac referred to when he wrote, “one of my readers pointed out”… Wikipedia has a good explanation of BRCA and of I3C.

The BRCA genes produce proteins that help to repair DNA damage. Some women have mutated genes, so the proteins these genes produce don’t repair DNA effectively, which leads to an increased risk of some cancers.

IC3 upregulates the BRCA genes i.e. it makes them produce more of these proteins, which in those without the mutation can reduce the risk of cancer. In those with BRCA mutations, like Angelina Jolie, increasing the amount of these proteins produced does not help, because they do not effectively repair damaged DNA. The fact that you appear to have misunderstood something so simple does not fill me with confidence about your education in other areas.

The following comment went into moderation because I quoted some of Lisa’s charming language uncensored. Since it is Sunday and Orac no doubt has better things to do than moderate his blog, I’m posting it again sans swearing. Apologies for the duplication, when the previous one appears.

Lisa Tristram,

And I get angry when I see people like you kreboizen spreading untruths about my field.

What untruths are those? Am I putting vulnerable, sick people’s health and lives at risk? Or just your income.

A frozen fish pie is NOT a good source of nutrition and the dietitian is not better educated than me

In what way is a fish pie not a good source of nutrition for a person with cancer who may have a poor appetite? Malnutrition is a common problem in cancer, and getting them to eat some food with carbohydrate, fats and protein in it may be very important.

Also, how does the fact the fish pie was “frozen” make the slightest difference? Seriously, why do you believe that? I suspect you believe in some sort of life force that is depleted by cooking or freezing foods, a belief that is very common in alternative health circles, despite there being no scientific evidence for it whatsoever.

At least when I make statements I am not making assumptions about yo and your level of education. You are very clearly not educated in the fields of nutrition and health so it would be best if it stick to your own field.

I was only going by what you have posted here. My education is a science-based one, yours, from what I have read, is not.

The whole point is I don’t spread misinformation..

Yet you have made statements like, “cancer never affects healthy people”, and described “scoffing heartily ” at a healthcare professional who actually gave some very good advice. You also suggested that your mother was killed by conventional treatment and stated that “my only regret is not getting her onto the herbs and nutrition quicker”, which surely suggests she would have done better on these than on conventional treatments. Many of the unpleasant symptoms you describe are the consequences of cancer, not the treatment. Many people see their loved ones suffer through terminal cancer, and wrongly assume (thanks in part to misinformation found on the internet) that it was the treatment that caused the suffering, not the disease itself.

Your railing against conventional doctors, who I am sure did their very best for your mother, only makes sense if you believe there is a better alternative treatment for cancer that they could have used but didn’t. Sadly there isn’t. Conventional treatment is the best we have at present, and I am quite sure that any breakthroughs in cancer prevention and treatment will come through science, not through alternative health researchers who blather about energy fields, meridians, chakras, zero point energy and such-like.

And I certain,y don’t tell people I can cure cancer

I’m very glad to hear that, though you do seem to imply it. You do seem to suggest that you can prevent it, though at best lifestyle choices can only reduce the risk. I hope you still encourage screening for cancer, such as mammography and PAP screening, even for people who are so healthy you claim they won’t get cancer.

You also stated that, “In the end it’s love and compassion that makes the biggest difference to people”. I beg to differ. In the end it is effective treatments and palliative care, including adequate pain relief, that make the biggest difference to people living with cancer.

It would be a lot more ethical if oncologists didn’t make such huge promises

Perhaps you had a bad experience with an oncologist, or misunderstood what s/he said (it happens). Oncologists generally give the cold, hard facts about a patient’s prognosis, tending to err on the side of caution, and if there is nothing they can do they will (or should) say so. Aggressive but hopeless treatment of cancer patients at the end of their lives is very often driven by the patient or their relatives, who insist that the doctors do anything they can, and complain that they have “given up” if they provide only palliative care, as they quite rightly should. I think that dying people should be made as comfortable as possible, not tortured with treatments that can at best prolong their suffering a little.

It seems to me it is CAM therapists that often make huge false promises, though they are usually very careful not to do so where it can get them into legal difficulties. I am very glad if you are not one of these.

Anyway you are a complete idiot did you thnk you can shut off about people you don’t know. […]

My response to what you wrote here has nothing at all to do with knowing you or not. I just reread what I wrote, and don’t think it warrants a response like that. I pointed out that what you have stated here is not scientifically accurate, and that in my opinion your profession is a scam unless it restricts itself to helping people to relax and deal with stress. I have read a lot about most alternative therapies, including aromatherapy, as a matter of fact, and that is really all the evidence supports, apart from some antibacterial and antifungal effects that occur at concentrations close to those that cause skin irritation.

And to be perfectly honest I do research my field through,y and look at double blind studies done with essential oils.

On this blog you are expected to support any claims you make with scientific evidence. If you have any evidence that your therapies can help in any way other than relaxation and stress relief, please share. I have had an interest in in natural and alternative therapies for several decades, and have sadly come to the conclusion that none of them are very useful, and many are worse than useless.

All medicine comes originally from natural sources ore replicating elements of them so you clearly don’t do enough research.

I don’t see how that follows. I have done plenty of research on both alternative and conventional medicine. Some herbs, like Aristolochia, were used for centuries before anyone realized that they were killing people by causing cancer. Others are dangerous in their natural form, but can be made safer and more effective by extraction, purification and chemical alterations.

Anyway that’s as close to a judgement as I am gong to make on you and only because you are making disgusting insinuations about what I am Doing and none of what’d you say is true. You area complete idiot

What disgusting insinuations are those? I stated an opinion. If it is wrong, put me straight with some evidence. You linked to Mike Adams nasty and misinformed article about Angelina Jolie, which I think I have every right to express my disgust at. I’ll skip through some of your ranting…

People actually think that chemo works. It doesn’t work it destroys and if you are lucky enough it will destroy cancer and you might be lucky enough to survive it if you are healthy enough. When you can prove that chemo works get back to me until then don’t you dare tell me what I do you don’t have a f*cking clue what I do

Prove that chemotherapy works for what? It can be very effective for lymphomas and leukemias, can prolong life in other cancers, and is a valuable adjunct to surgery to prevent recurrence.

How does the fact that there are no effective treatments for some forms of cancer mean that natural therapies are better? It just doesn’t follow.I have known several people who have undergone chemotherapy and told me it wasn’t too bad, and they are alive and well years later.

““I3C doesn’t suppress BRCA1 expression. Rather, it increases it. ””
I am interested in the above comment and have never heard that in either medical or holistic therapy circles please can you explain and tell me where you get your info from as it is a component of cruciferous vegetables your comment is very confusing and I would be interested to research if further if you can explain.

It was me Orac referred to when he wrote, “one of my readers pointed out”… Wikipedia has a good explanation of BRCA and of I3C.

The BRCA genes produce proteins that help to repair DNA damage. Some women have mutated genes, so the proteins these genes produce don’t repair DNA effectively, which leads to an increased risk of some cancers.

IC3 upregulates the BRCA genes i.e. it makes them produce more of these proteins, which in those without the mutation can reduce the risk of cancer. In those with BRCA mutations, like Angelina Jolie, increasing the amount of these proteins produced does not help, because they do not effectively repair damaged DNA. The fact that you appear to have misunderstood this does not fill me with confidence about your education in other areas.

Alright. Normally, Saturday night is a mellow time, and when I get up in the morning on Sunday there are rarely that many comments to go through, much less moderate, many of them highly inflammatory. However, again a person (or two) with agendas from other time zones (such as Australia) decided to flood the comments with attacks and pseudoscience, to the annoyance of all.

Lisa, seriously. No one—and I mean no one—has used your story of your mother to attack you. I’ve already deleted another of your comments with the f-bomb in it, even after I told you to stop it.

Nigel, you need to tone it down, too.

I’ve warned both of you once already. This is the second warning. There won’t be a third. To show you I mean business this time, your comments are going into automatic moderation. You two have already wasted more of my time than you’re worth.

So far I’ve stayed out of the conversation but feel compelled to chime in. Your Facebook page is full of references to crackpots and cranks like Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer and Phillip Day, who you seem to admire, or at least hold in high regard for representating your personal beliefs about health and “wellness.” These are three very dangerous people for promoting quackery, and they have all been thoroughly ridiculed here on RI and other science blogs. It’s guilt by association and makes you look like a quack. Louise Day did NOT cure her cancer by herself and has never been able to prove otherwise. Phillip Day is so wrong it would be funny if he weren’t such a menace to public health. Wayne Dyer believes a faith healer/con man in Brazil helped cure him.
We debunk people like this on a daily basis here.

Just because someone has been on Oprah doesn’t mean they know squat. Oprah is one of the biggest threats to public health on the planet for providing a platform for these idiots.

The fact that these nutjobs write books and speak publically means someone who is sick might be influenced by their lunatic opinions and avoid traditional, tried-and-true healthcare in favour of rainbows, fairy dust and unicorns.

You also seem to espouse some modified version of “The Secret” (visualization, positive thinking) which has also been fully debunked in science circles. I realize you have a hippy dippy world view but that runs counter to science, regardless of how much you proclaim you didn’t oppose conventional pharmaceuticals for your mum. You state somewhere on your Facebook page that Angelina Jolie believed she’d get cancer so she probably would have (before surgery) which is exactly what “The Secret” teaches. You make your own fate, or words to that effect.

You also talk about high-dose IV Vitamin C as a cancer cure. No good evidence that it works. It’s all nonsense.

And you don’t seem to know that the correct contraction for “you are” is “you’re,” not “your.” That’s an error you make consistently on your Facebook page. It’s one of the reasons someone questioned your university credentials. A high school dropout should know that. Pedantic, yes, but it reflects on your intelligence and when you provide opinions on healthcare in public you are held up to high scutiny.

One more thing, while I’m being pedantic: you mention frozen pies are full of preservatives. Wrong. The freezing is the preservative, Anything frozen does not need preservatives; it’s a contradiction in terms of food preparation and storage. You may have legitimate issues with some processed frozen products for other reasons (e.g. high fat, high sodium) but use of preservatives is not one of those issues.

In fact some frozen products like vegetables are often healthier than other methods or packaging precisely because the nutrients are “locked in” almost as soon as they are picked or harvested. And that includes fresh vegetables which start to deteriorate the second they are pulled out of the ground or off a tree.

Apologies to Lisa re: preservatives. I was wrong; she never mentioned them. It was a comment from flip that I assumed was a reference to something Lisa posted. Looking back over the comments I realize that altough Lisa criticized frozen fish pies, she never used the word preservatives.

I wouldn’t want false accusations part of the police report.

But my point still stands about the benefits of freezing as a superior method of preservation.

…Hay said that about this time she found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, which taught her the transformative power of thought. Hay revealed that here she studied the New Thought works of authors like Florence Scovel Shinn, who claimed that positive thinking could change people’s material circumstances, and the Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes, who taught that positive thinking could heal the body.

By Hay’s account, in the early 1970s she became a Religious Science practitioner. In this role she led people in spoken affirmations, which she believes would cure their illnesses, and became popular as a workshop leader. She also recalled how she had studied Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa.

Hay described how in 1977 or 1978 she was diagnosed with “incurable” cervical cancer, and how she came to the conclusion that by holding on to her resentment for her childhood abuse and rape she had contributed to its onset. She reported how she had refused conventional medical treatment, and began a regime of forgiveness, coupled with therapy, nutrition, reflexology and occasional enemas. She claimed in the interview that she rid herself of the cancer by this method, but, while swearing to its truth, declared that there is no doctor left alive who can confirm this story.

In 1976, Hay wrote her first book Heal Your Body, which began as a small pamphlet containing a list of different bodily ailments and their “probable” metaphysical causes. This pamphlet was later enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life, published in 1984.

I’m amused by how Lisa seems to think because others have carried on the conversation, that I (among others) have dropped off. Unlike her, I do have a life outside the internet. And coming back to see 100+ comments on a Sunday morning is a bit daunting.

I do have to say that at times the conversation got a bit heated and outside the realms of exchange.

@Nigel: we responded to the Lappe information. It didn’t prove what you say it proved. Now, if you do have something to say, give the peer-reviewed proof.

@Lisa: same to you. Give us the peer reviewed proof. I like essential oils; they smell good. I don’t believe they cure anything (except a bad mood or tired feet in a footbath!). And, as a nurse and then midwife, I had a lot of training in nutrition. Education here in the US, where most nurses are university-trained now, is different than education in other countries where the nurses are often hospital trained. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you can’t compare apples and oranges that way.

So I don’t understand your arguments about frozen fish pies. Maybe they aren’t the healthiest thing. But, sometimes just getting calories into a person is more important than the nutrients. I had a patient with hyperemesis. It took several days treatment before she could keep any food down. The FIRST thing she kept down was something she craved – Tootsie Rolls. No, not really healthy for a pregnant woman. But once she kept down those, she was able to add additional, healthier foods to her diet.

alt med folk often talk about “life coaches” to assist others to deal with emotional or educational/ vocational issues- usually, this involves training at a new agey institute or distance learning facility. Sometimes woo-worn websites offer services and enlist applicants for their own particular brand of coach.

Although these people take on problems they which may be identical to those psychologists and counsellors manage, AFAIK, they do not usually have any governmentally sanctioned or accredited degree and/ or training.

Psychologists and counsellors, depending upon where you reside, but generally throughout the English-speaking world, need to have graduate degrees, training via an institute dedicated to a particular perspective ( e.g. CBT, Freudian etc.) or via a university and may need to jump through additional hoopsto please the government as well.

I don’t see any of that on LIsa’s site.

Of course, technically anyone can call herself or himself anything, astrologers and nutritionists also “counsel” people, I just doubt that it’s the same as that to which I refer.

The bottom line for Nigel and Lisa is that they, by their vicious unwarranted personal attacks, have drawn unfavorable publicity to themselves and their blogs.

I’m sending best wishes to Angelina Jolie, Sharon Osborne, Christina Applegate and the thousands of anonymous women who have undergone preventive elective mastectomies and preventive elective salpingo-oophorectomies to lessen their risks for cancer.

I suspect Lisa has left, but she has focused my mind on a couple of common themes that may be worth mentioning.

Firstly, yet again we see someone who has watched a loved one die of cancer come away from the experience with the idea that it was the treatment that was responsible for the suffering they witnessed. Again we see someone assume, without any evidence at all, that there are safe and effective alternative treatments for cancer that, for reasons that are never very clear, conventional doctors ignore. It must be painful to believe that if only your loved one had been given the right foods or herbs or whatever, they might have survived. There can’t be many of us who have not lost a loved one to cancer. Why would any of us, whether we work for drug companies, or are part of conventional healthcare, not want a safe and effective treatment for cancer? The sad truth is that we still don’t have very effective treatments for some cancers, especially if they are only diagnosed at an advanced stage. It is a mistake to deduce from this that any form of CAM is effective in treating cancer

Secondly, why do people assume that if we support conventional treatments for cancer, and vaccinations to prevent diseases, we are not in favor of a healthy lifestyle? It is quite possible to support both. I, and I’m sure all the regulars here, wholeheartedly support a healthy lifestyle, as long as it is based on scientific evidence. Many of us would have a lot less work to do if people would only adopt a healthy lifestyle, stay up to date on their vaccines, and have regular health checks and screens.

However, many of the diets I see promoted by natural therapists are not as healthy as they claim. Raw food diets, for example, are difficult to digest, and we may not extract all the nutrients in them. Our digestive systems are not able to digest cellulose, so cooking can be important to allow access to cellular contents. It is difficult to get enough calories from a vegetarian raw food diet, unless you spend all day chewing, or juicing and cleaning your juicer.

Some foods contain antinutrient factors such as phytic acid, polyphenols and oxalic acid that prevent your body from absorbing nutrients, and are destroyed by cooking, making these foods more nutritious when cooked than when raw. Raw broccoli and other brassicas contain glucosinolates that prevent absorption of iodine. Legumes contain enzyme inhibitors that are also destroyed by cooking.

Vitalistic beliefs are also rife in this area, with people like Lisa believing that frozen food is somehow unhealthy, which only makes sense to me if some vital energy in food is destroyed by the process. The idea that microwaves adversely affect food is also very common, and very wrong.

What an epic, Lifetime Original Movie™ of a thread this turned out to be. I was at a bandmate’s house after our gig last night and one his houseguests started to go off on atheists and how empty our lives must be an how we will all be Buddhists in a few years. My partner shot me his patented “well, this ought to be interesting” glances and waited for my reaction. I looked at my bandmate and his wife and all their happy, drinking, eating guests and decided the little shite wasn’t really worth it. The point was, this was someone else’s house and someone else’s friend. It wasn’t my place to crap all over the party and if I wanted to discuss the guest’s rudeness to his face, I should do so in another context.

Well, Nigel and Lisa, this is our house, we are Orac’s little (Addams) family after a fashion, and like so many other online blogs and communities we have our own unofficial, somewhat fluid rules of engagement.

Lisa, as a former New Ager, Alt Med order of the Worried Well member, I get the level of fear you live in. The concept of a materialistic universe is really scary. It’s much easier to think that you create your own reality. And speaking of creating my own reality, I spent many hours in the 80s in Louise Hay’s presence at her “Hay Rides” for AIDS sufferers. Talk about terror. You have some idea from having lost loved ones to cancer, now imagine that cancer wasn’t well understood and they had no idea of what kind of treatments to throw at it. That was the gay community in the 80s. I was negative, but wouldn’t find that out for another 10 years until I was forced to get tested for surgery I had to undergo. I believed Louise, that I created my own reality and that if I accepted the death penalty of a diagnosis, I would surely die. I avoided doctors and gobbled supplements and homeopathic remedies, had my aura scrubbed, did acupuncture, aromatherapy, chromatherapy, slept under orgone blankets, ate organic and lived in existential fear for years. I survived magical thinking, some of my friends didn’t.

But I’m not a stupid man now, and I wasn’t then. I was scared shitless, is what I was, and magic was my coping mechanism. Fortunately I was HIV negative. Fortunately I didn’t develop a cancer or other illness that would have gone undetected during my mediphobic years.

You seem to be “working something out” here, as I would have said back in the day. Your original claim to be asking about the BCRA1 mutation seems a bit disingenuous, as you clearly don’t believe in this science stuff too much. What’s your deal, and if we’re all so horrible and eeeeevil, why stay? Why do you keep coming back with ever greater levels of drama and accusation? I think you came looking for a fight. A big one. Are you on the verge of waking up from all the guilt and magical angst? You sound like me at the height of my Worried-Wellness, all high-dudgeon and passive/aggressive, done-to, righteous indignation. As my sister told me on her death bed (when I was forever changed), there’s one law to the universe: Shit Happens. Sounds trite, but try that one on for size, it’s pretty liberating. No worrying about if your thoughts will cause cancer. No blaming yourself, her oncologists or your mother’s “negative thoughts” for her illness and death. The universe is full of terrible beauty and doesn’t give a crap about you. But, it’s stunning and vast and we get to know a teensy sliver of it’s wonders and live in it for a brief time. That’s enough for me.

At any rate, I’m glad to hear more of your tale. I think that it rivals Jim Laider’s ( and that’s as good as it gets).

Lately I’ve been thinking about the foundations of magical thinking being inherent in human cognition**- associative memory would have objects that resemble each other visually or functionaly forever linked – perhaps as charms: rhino horns or antlers will invoke particular states of being.
Our minds tend to fill in missing parts: we see present situations and desired endpoints as intrinsically interchangeable parts of a greater whole, although in reality things don’t necessarily have to turn out that way. “Wanting” something makes us believe it more likely.

Hay convinces people to follow the magical course of thought and memory- the ways in which we trick ourselves-
as though it were reality. ‘Thinking makes it so’ usually only in our minds, not in external reality.

** interesting that what gives up an advantage also works against us once we consider factors beyond the purely physical. I’ll come back to this eventually.

I’ve never eaten a frozen fish pie, so can’t speak to it particularly. I suppose Lisa’s rational objection to such would be that such frozen pies would contain more salt, sugar, and saturated or trans fat than would be desirable, which could be avoided by baking one’s fish pie from scratch. She might also reasonably object to the loss of texture and possibly flavor or nutrients from baking, freezing, and reheating said pie. She might also have an aversion to pie, which does have a fairly high saturated fat content in the crust. Of course, this is all just speculation on my part.

As regards fish pie, and please forgive me for going all about me, in service of my point, which I promise to get to:

When I started treatment for cancer, some wonderful and generous friends arranged to bring my family food on a regular basis. They did their best to make good and healthy food, and it was evident that some of them were thinking about Foods That Are Good For Cancer Patients ™, with the unfortunate result that I was totally unable to eat some of the food. I don’t know if broccoli and lentils have the cancer-fighting powers that some people credit them with, I know that they disagreed with me quite badly during chemo.

I think nutrition specialists dealing with cancer patients quite reasonably think that calories in, ease of processing, and macro-nutrients (fat, carbs, protein) are the key issues during chemotherapy. Frozen fish pie has all the things, and your patient can stick it in the microwave, which is a quite safe food prep technique even for people with chemo-related peripheral neuropathy that leaves them prone to kitchen accidents. If the patient likes it, it fills all the requirements.

Unfortunately, lots of people *around* cancer patients don’t sufficiently consider that these features are the important things.

Pareidolius,
When I read something here that is awesome in one way or another, which happens often, I usually nod quietly to myself, not wanting to clog up a thread with “I agree” comments, but I can’t help myself this time.

The universe is full of terrible beauty and doesn’t give a crap about you. But, it’s stunning and vast and we get to know a teensy sliver of it’s wonders and live in it for a brief time. That’s enough for me.

I can only assume that those who think the life of an atheist or agnostic must be empty, are unaware of just how extraordinary the universe in general, and life in particular, are. I feel something very close to a spiritual sense of awe and connectedness when I contemplate how vast the universe is, or delve into the intricacies of cell biology, or watch a documentary about wildlife, and remember that I am related to all life on earth, literally a part of the tree of life.

In 1976, Hay wrote her first book Heal Your Body, which began as a small pamphlet containing a list of different bodily ailments and their “probable” metaphysical causes. This pamphlet was later enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life, published in 1984.

In case anybody hasn’t seen this book, it’s a catalogue of victim-blaming – and I mean that literally. Pretty much every ailment and illness known to man is listed, with the spiritual/psychological/personal failings and blocks that cause it. And of course, every illness is always cured when the patient recognises and corrects these failings – never mind those pesky doctors and their toxic treatments!
(Some well-meaning person gave me a copy a few years back. It soon ended up on the fire, contributing a few moments’ warmth to my house. So it wasn’t totally useless.)

Well, it looks like some mediterranean diet promotors are trying to give a ‘balanced’ view here:http://advancedmediterranean.com/2013/05/19/did-angelina-jolie-make-the-right-decision-to-have-surgery/
They link to a certain Dr. Cate, who seems to be an opponent of preventive surgery and to Orac’s not so secret other blog.
Dr. Cate’s article looks easy on the eyes (at least for me), with some illustration, and it is pretty short. She links to some higly dubious sites on her blog. Two sites about some paleo diet, a site on a healthy mouth which seems just as quacky as one can get and another health food site, which pretends people in the early 1900, weren’t obese and didn’t die from diabetes, heart diseases and cancer.
So, I’m sorry to say, I don’t really trust dr. Cate.

And though the ‘balanced’ article by the mediteranean diet promotors states, they wouldn’t suggest ms. Jolie made the wrong choice, they state that the diet hasn’t been proper studied for cancer reduction risk in women with BRCA genes.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think it is a balanced article at all. But well, I’ll leave it to others to rip it apart.

I can only assume that those who think the life of an atheist or agnostic must be empty, are unaware of just how extraordinary the universe in general, and life in particular, are. I feel something very close to a spiritual sense of awe and connectedness when I contemplate how vast the universe is, or delve into the intricacies of cell biology, or watch a documentary about wildlife, and remember that I am related to all life on earth, literally a part of the tree of life.

I suspect that what they are actually trying to say is: “atheists must feel very lonely”. Having a sky daddy to look after you must feel far more comforting to some people than dealing with the fact that your four year old has cancer and nobody in the universe can do anything about it.

Having said that I agree with the underlying sentiment, in that the more I learn about the universe, the more wondrous it seems.

This week we are building to a most special eclipse. On MAY 25, the lunar eclipse is the first one of it’s kind EVA. The birth of a new family. We get to be here for the birth of a family of eclipses that will repeat (in the same alignment) every 18 years until the year 3275 That’s 1,262 years into the future & YOU get to set the tone for what carries forward. Now, do you wonder why you are being so urged to be responsible to you & adopt a flexible approach to your life? Close the old doors & the universe will throw open the new. These new beginnings are occurring daily now. I’ll have more on this as the week progresses xx

Oh, and further down her page is this:

Interesting Orac’s anonymous crew are having so much fun looking at my blog (thanks btw my stats are going up! :)) and trying to find out stuff about me! Probably trying to “catch me out” peddling natural cancer cures except they won’t find anything because I don’t. And even lower than that they are utilizing my mums death as a source of antagonism against me. (Yep I know – pretty low). But apparently they will go to any lengths to ensure we as humans get the chemo and genetic testing we deserve……. Which includes spending hours trashing me in a blog and looking at my stuff! Instead if making a real difference. Scared? Indeed I am , these people are researchers, doctors, RN’s…… Really is this what it has come to? Oh and apparently the love and crap I spout amounts to nothing when it comes to cancer. Ouch….. I hope for your sake you never find yourself in the ‘care’ of a cancer ‘expert’ like Dr Gorski.
[snip]
As much as @Dr David H Gorski would like to think that his blogs are fighting the good fight against natural medicine my recent experience and the barrage of personal ( yes totally personal so nothing to do with what he claims to be saving the world Against) abuse and consequent stalking and abuse through social media and Skype have shown me, is that if anything there is no point to all this focus on point proving and scientific musings because all it’s really doing is taking away from the people that are suffering. Lets study and learn for sure but then that knowledge needs to be shared in a useful way that can actually help people rather than simply fighting each other. I had hoped I might learn something from someone so long in the field. Apparently there is nothing to learn except don’t trust people who can’t even post under their actual name. Good on you Orac.

I’d wonder about how well cleaned the microwave is, in your place. Microwaves just heat food – they don’t produce any chemical changes other heating doesn’t. The places it applies the heat can be a bit different, because different chemicals absorb the microwaves more/less efficiently (water especially efficiently, but others too), but that’s it.

Different taste from a microwave would have to be either due to over/underheating, OR some sort of contamination. Which can readily happen, since in the end it’s a metal box. Stuff can get on the walls easily, and from there into the food. Including cleaning agents.

And the over/underheating will be different for each food and each cooking technique you’re comparing it to. It’ll be a lot closer to steaming than grilling, for instance. A *systematic* difference would then imply some kind of contamination.

Funny how Lisa is all sweetness and light on her blog, and here she unleashed a flood of verbal abuse and foul language. Much of it was aimed at me, and I thought I was quite polite, considering. I certainly wasn’t abusive, and used no foul language at all. If that’s what her New Age aromatherapy does for you, no thinks! In any case, I’m anosmic, which makes me immune to aromatherapists.

If you believe scaremongers like Mike Adams, you’d be better off eating styrofoam that microwaved broccoli. He contends that microwaving bombards food with “nuclear radiation” that strips the “life force” and nutrients from otherwise healthy foods and causes everything from headaches to cancer. He also trots out the canard that the former USSR banned microwave ovens (not true) because the government was concerned about the health of their citizens.

Speaking of Mikey, and to bring this back on topic, he posted another screed today about how men are now being influenced by Angelina Jolie to cut out their prostates. Some of the hate-filled examples and analogies he uses “as satire” would induce nausea if I wasn’t already so accustomed to his bile.

Beam-up: It’s very clean; no visible stains, usually used to heat food in containers. I probably should have mentioned that I’m something of a supertaster.

MSII: Speaking of Mikey, and to bring this back on topic, he posted another screed today about how men are now being influenced by Angelina Jolie to cut out their prostates.

How would that even work? I mean, in the end, breasts are basically surface tissue while prostates are..well, not. And like most of the alt brigade, he seems to think surgery is done willy-nilly. I’ve only had my wisdom teeth out, and that was planned months in advance. Is it just me, or do these guys see black-market surgeons on every corner?

Oh J-sus.
I looked at MIkey’s latest (@ MSII -btw- there’s also a new one about Angelina vs real women) re prostates and have to comment on his pathetic attempts at satire or parody:

children’s comedic efforts usually reflect their cognitive level-younger kids create ( and enjoy) more physical, broad, slapstick jokes and pranks while older kids become more ironic, subtle, Schadenfreudes-ish ( sp) or focus on word play and mannerisms. Their general thought is more abstract and hypothetical as well. I am, of course, contrasting the endpoints of a long continuum.

MIke makes obvious comparisons- reaching for the ludricous endpoints- but goes way beyond what’s funny. For some reason, he can’t see this.

Curiously, the other idiot I survey also engages in over-contrasting black-and-white thinking when he discusses his ‘enemies” ( see my comment to flip) vis a vis his own qualities.
.
Good vs evil, thin vs fat, attractive vs ugly. Right. The real world looks just like that.

Given the number of self-help, fuzzy-wuzzy inspirational posts there were, I’m going to guess she’s not a professional who can handle a lot of chaos.

@Krebiozen

Funny how Lisa is all sweetness and light on her blog, and here she unleashed a flood of verbal abuse and foul language.

I change my mind. She’s just your average hypocrite.

Anyway, I think she’s probably scared off now and too busy enjoying her own little echo chamber on facebook.

@Lilady

I seriously doubt she did anything but *maybe* whinge to facebook about people harassing her. Even then, I don’t think they’d do anything about it. I have only looked at her page, so unless they’re banning people for doing that now….

Mikey […] posted another screed today about how men are now being influenced by Angelina Jolie to cut out their prostates.
She has never had that effect on me, being if anything more of a stimulant. But back at #2 I clearly under-estimated Mike’s capacity for self-satire:No-one seems to consider prostate surgery or radiotherapy as “mutilation”.

That’s fairly well-known, yes. It effectively steams in the microwave, which is better since you’re not trying to trigger browning. That’s the kind of thing I was talking about with over/undercooking; conventionally baked potatoes are actually overcooked.

Beamup – but browning means more flavor from caramelization and the Maillard reaction. A microwaved potato lacks the character of a real baked potato. Note: a potato wrapped tightly in foil when baked may not be appreciably different from a steamed or microwaved potato.

But wouldn’t the TRUE woos insist that our ancient ancestors probably threw the potatoes into the communal fire- whilst they sat regalling each other with tales of the exploits of our brave and wise forefathers/ mothers who knew the g-ds/esses personally- and then just ate them blackened- so as to have the charcoaled skins absorb toxins-or suchlike..

Thanks Krebiozen,
We live in an unintended universe in which “something” arose from “nothing.” I use quotes not to scare, but because our language is so inaccurate and inadequate for describing how amazing that is. I am so much more in love with being here than I was when I thought I would live multiple lives and that all of this had reason and purpose (and I was its special snowflake). That worldview was so tiny and egocentric, full of ghosts and rulebooks. The Shit Happens universe isn’t existentially soothing when first encountered, but I have found an unexpected comfort in finite existence. My unique place as a gregarious bag of self-aware chemistry on a little blue oasis in a universe dominated by gravity, sleeting radiation and vast, ephemeral structures of cold, noble gasses fills me with wonder and warmth.
Thanks for bringing your expertise and keen insight to all of us here.

@Denice Walter – it depends on whose ancestors you’re talking about. If your ancestors came from Peru or Bolivia, then that scenario is quite likely. I’ve heard it mentioned (though cannot say it’s true) that early potatoes had to be processed in various ways as they were otherwise slightly poisonous, but this has been bred out of it now.

As an aside, I read in Wikipedia that “Humans can survive healthily on a diet of potatoes supplemented only with milk or butter, which contain the two vitamins not provided by potatoes (vitamins A and D).” This explains the health benefits of mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, and baked potatoes with butter and sour cream.

I’ve heard it mentioned (though cannot say it’s true) that early potatoes had to be processed in various ways as they were otherwise slightly poisonous, but this has been bred out of it now.

It’s true. Some Native South and Central Americans live at high altitudes where only bitter potatoes can survive. They either freeze-dry bitter potatoes, which removes toxins before ingestion, or consume them with clays that adsorb toxins after ingestion, which may sound weird, but we do the same when we ingest kaolin to treat diarrhea. See the work of Timothy Johns, for example this paper (PDF).

That would be a poor way of preventing prostatic carcinoma, since most of them involve the peripheral (subcapsular) part of the gland, which TUPR doesn’t remove.

Having educated myself somewhat about the different types of prostatectomy, I stand corrected. My experience of Ca prostate has been mostly limited to delivering elevated PSA levels (or acid phosphatase results back in the day) to urologists and leaving them with all the fun decisions of what to do with them. It was a urologist I once encountered that I stole the “apple corer” analogy from.

<blockquote.This week we are building to a most special eclipse. On MAY 25, the lunar eclipse is the first one of it’s kind EVA. The birth of a new family. We get to be here for the birth of a family of eclipses that will repeat (in the same alignment) every 18 years until the year 3275
Sigh. That’s a Saros Cycle she’s talking about; it’s just a method for predicting eclipses.
The Babylonians knew about Saros Cycles, and used them. Yet today’s New Age wackaloons, who have access to far greater knowledge and education resources than those Iron Age folk could ever imagine, think they’re something magical and special. Sheesh.

Yep, only New Age folk think they’ve come across an eclipse that has *never* happened before. Or calendars that somehow involve the end of the world. It’s like they walk out on a fiery argument, miss one person killing the other, then come back with their own, far ‘better’ idea that somehow the dead person had a heart attack… all the while ignoring the fact that killer is standing there with the knife and the dead person has a large bleeding gash in their back.

The sad thing is that if they just stopped for a second they might actually learn something. (If the Doctor was here, the learning would involve a very loud… “RUN”! ;))

MIke makes obvious comparisons- reaching for the ludricous endpoints- but goes way beyond what’s funny. For some reason, he can’t see this.

Mikey’s satire is about as funny as having a root canal with no anesthetic. That guy is a real piece of work. The so-called Health Ranger is completely unable to see that the seething mess inside his own head is a bigger threat to women’s health than anything Angelina Jolie has done.

Perhaps Mikey should test out his proposed service himself by having his head removed from his shoulders (SATIRE!!) but I suspect his body has been functioning for quite some time now without the intervention of his brain.

OTOH, people would have enough sense to be scared of anything a “Headless Ranger” tells them.

I bet if you asked 100 people if they could interpret particle physics research successfully, fewer than 5 would say “yes”. If we repeated the exercise for “cancer research”, why is it that everybody and their pet hamster thinks they can hand-wave epigenetics and signal transduction and be experts on cancer biology?

It’s why Burzynski is so effective with his claim of being a bold pioneer in targeted gene therapy with a 20 year old orphan drug… no-one seems to know what these things are, but still think they can sniff out cancer frauds.

This country needs an education in science, a stern talking-to, and leadership from people who know why fruit-fly research matters.

Nigel Kilbrum showed up at Scott Gavura’s SBM blog on IV vitamin rejuvenation “therapies”. He demanded an answer from Scott only….because he had a bad experience with “the trolls” on Respectful Insolence.

So….Scott did reply…and so did I. My comment made it through moderation, in spite of his copy/paste filthy vile comment directed at me: 🙂

Quackery:
I have been accused of quackery. Despite having provided evidence to refute the claim, the person has refused to retract the accusation or provide proper evidence (other than Logical fallacies) to support it. If Twitter doesn’t remove the content, it will be necessary to implement “The Eddie Mitchell Treatment”.

@ MSII: Ha, Ha. Nigel ought to check out the Pothead Troll (Jacob’s) posts on RI, as well as his hundreds of sock puppets, when he libeled me, by calling me a drug pusher.

It took me months to find his real identity in London, but when I did nail the troll, I told him I would sue him for libel. (IANAL…but have a *close relationship* with an attorney who was counsel to an international corporation). Pothead backtracked quickly.

Of course, he doesn’t know what libel is, because he also just posted quotes of it all over his own blog. If it’s libel, you’d think he’d go out of his way *not to quote it* lest it further damage his reputation.

Despite having provided evidence to refute the claim, I decided to ignore that and focus on their use of ad hominems, because when someone calls me names it totally prevents me from posting evidence.

Yeah. I actually had seen them in the store before, and knew beforehand that I was probably going to be advised to use them. I mentally told myself to say “I’m not in the mood for burning my hair”, but also knew that I would be a wuss. I did end up giving the salesperson (not the actual chemist thank goodness) a pretty annoyed look and told them a curt “no, I’m not trying that”…

Sigh… it’s unfortunate that this is part of a chain of chemists and that to find one that’s not part of the chain in my area is extremely difficult. It’d be nice to find an alternative 😉

…I don’t know about you, but to me, that looks like harassment. In English law (dunno about US law), harassment is a criminal offence, punishable by imprisonment. My defamation case against Mitchell is proceeding nicely. He should have received the 28-page “Letter of Claim” by now. He has until Wednesday 5th June to comply with the terms of the letter, or face high court proceedings and an injunction. Mitchell lives in the UK and his full details were obtained in less than a minute by doing a “Whois” look-up on his domain name. Anonymous US posters are a little more difficult (but not impossible) to trace. I have my (legal) methods! 😉

I feel like legally pursuing lilady, as I think that she’s gone way beyond what is reasonable behaviour.

The breast cancer sufferer who put me on a “Breast cancer quackery” list is obviously upset, as having breast cancer is a traumatic experience. My “threat” to legally pursue her was an attempt to get her to remove my blog from that list, as my blog contains no quackery. I have reported it, using Twitter’s complaint procedure. I’m not intending to sue Twitter, lol. In the meantime, breast cancer sufferers get to read my blog, so it’s not all bad! 😀

More of my comments are awaiting moderation at Nigel’s blog. Apparently he considers me of low intelligence for posting a reply to him (even though it’s not), when he told us that he did not want to be spoken to anymore.

My point of posting that comment was to clarify that instead of debating his assertions and evidence, he chose to focus on the “insults” and then ran off. It was an invitation to prove us all wrong by posting evidence. Instead he’s taken it to mean “they won’t leave me alone, even though I asked them, and they must be stupid because they keep doing what I asked them not to do”. Or something.

The logic train has missed me on this one. Or perhaps it’s just not logical.

*His actual comment on his blog is

My last ever post asked you to not ask me any more questions. Yet you persisted in asking me questions. That’s why I made the comment about your intelligence. Got it?

If Rumpeepoo of the Bailey (thanks Narad!) really intends to pursue American citizens such as Orac and lilady for libel in the British courts, based on lilady’s calling him a “quack”, he should seriously consider a few things:

The upshot is that under the SPEECH Act the U.S. courts won’t recognize or enforce a foreign judgement unless the foreign courts offer protection equivalent to that in our courts (which the British courts emphatically do not; in fact if I recall correctly the Act was enacted specifically because of the atrocious litigation in British courts) or the plaintiff can show he would have prevailed in our courts with our First Amendment protections, which I don’t believe Rumpeepoo can. I have a link for that which I’ll put in a separate comment to avoid moderation.

Also, Ken said, if the foreign plaintiff gets a criminal charge against an American for their speech, which is apparently possible in India but Rumpeepoo may be blustering about Britain, they won’t be able to extradite our citizen because most extradition treaties require “dual criminality — that is, that the offense is a crime in both countries.” And calling someone a quack is not a crime here

Furthermore, if Rumpeepoo does go through with his threats, he can confidently expect a massive reaction from the blogosphere which will enormously magnify the scrutiny and criticism which he wishes to suppress. It’s called the Streisand Effect. He should look it up.

One of Nigeepoopoo’s complaints is that lilady “followed him over to SBM” in order to harass him. He is oblivious to the fact that both blogs are run by the same person and thus attract many of the same readers. Nobody ‘followed him”; we all read both blogs routinely (or at least most of us do).

I also like how he indicated *sic* when quoting lilady’s spelling of “unfavorable.” Of course since he thinks he is the center of the universe and the boss of the internet he is unable to understand that some words are spelled differently in different parts of the parts of the world.

Yes, where I am in Canada we use the extra “u” in words like neighbour and favour but I am smart enough to know that in the US the “u” is dropped and no *sic* is needed.

Just one more example of his arrogance, pretentiousness, smugness and self-importance. Is that libellous, nigeepoopoo?

Wouldn’t you love to be one of his lawyers (or solicitors, to use the proper UK term)? I can only imagine the eye-rolling that must go on as they smile, nod and say “Yes, Nige, we’ll get right on that” and start the meter rolling.

I too thought of what Ken White at Popehat would do to him in a matter of seconds. Someone has to tell Nigeepoopoo to “Snort my taint.”

Of course Nigeepoopoo probably thinks he knows as much about the law as he thinks he knows about diet and nutrition and handles his own legal affairs. He’s demonstrated a marked ignorance about both matters here and on his blog.

As an example of the Streisand effect, Rumpeepoo’s threat reminded me of Stuart Pivar, of whom I know absolutely nothing except that he sued PZ Myers for calling him a crackpot in a book review in 2007. I’ll bet other people here remember him for that very same reason, showing that the Streisand Effect can affect your online reputation for literally years.

What would happen if we ALL posted “libellous” (or what he perceives as libellous in his paranoid, twisted little head) comments about Nigeepoopoo? Kind of an “I am Spartacus” united-we-stand tactic. Could you imagine how much it would cost him in “legal eagles” to attempt to take action?

He is quite clearly unable to cite any case law which he could rely upon to prove that he would win such a case.

He also goes out of his way to accept the assertion that suing across international borders would work.

He’s quite obviously making hollow threats.

@LW

I even linked him to Popehat and mentioned Brian Deer and Simon Singh. Apparently he is letting “his legal eagles deal with it”, and all he can cite in support of law suits is “read Wikipedia”. And mentioned the Streisand Effect.

(Did you read my mind before posting? ;))

Oh and for laughs, he seems to be under the impression that if you continue talking about someone once they’ve left the discussion, that’s considered rude (or something) because they asked you to stop talking.

Sigh.. freedom of speech advocate he is not.

I respectfully suggest based on his inability to cite anything useful, that he is being a blowhard and any threats can be ignored. You’re right, Popehat would wipe the floor with him.

Tempting. But personally I found Lilady’s comments to be too much and am steering clear of that particular sandtrap. I’d rather focus on the facts rather than the opinions: the facts are that he can’t cite anything and isn’t willing to accept or consider the idea that if you make an assertion, you’re the one to back it up; not the other way around.

He just played the Pharma Shill gambit on SBM, saying Orac has an undeclared conflict of interest when discussing “alternative cancer cures” and cancer prevention because he makes money performing surgery on cancer patients. And he refuses to use “Dr.” when addressing our host; preferring to call him “Mr.”

And he will let his “legal team” decide what is harassment/libel/defamation. An entire TEAM! Imagine the fees!

Of course you’re right. You are much more restrained and mature than I am, and I respect you for that. I also admire your attempts to engage Nigeepoo in rational dialogue on his blog but think it’s ultimately futile. It’s like DJT all over again: no amount of intelligent conversation can or will get through.

At least DJT had a much thicker skin when it came to all the invectives we threw his way. He never threatened any legal action; he merely doubled down with his incoherent rambling walls of text. He seemed to enjoy being insulted by us as he thrived on the attention.

He just played the Pharma Shill gambit on SBM, saying Orac has an undeclared conflict of interest when discussing “alternative cancer cures” and cancer prevention because he makes money performing surgery on cancer patients.

How does Rumpeepoo of the Bailey figure it’s an undeclared conflict of interest? When someone describes himself as a “surgical oncologist specializing in breast cancer surgery”, I think reasonable people would deduce that he performs surgery on cancer patients and, since few people are independently wealthy, he probably gets paid for doing so. I have a hard time seeing how much more clearly he could express that “he makes money performing surgery on cancer patients.”

Hey guys, I wish you wouldn’t engage Nigeepoo anymore on his blog. Like every troll, he gets his “jollies” by pouring out his invective and bile. He got p!ssed at me on RI because I linked to his blog, thus exposing him to more ridicule for his pretentious and ignorant pronouncements about diet and supplements.

He was further p!ssed at me when I called him a liar at SBM when he stated that the RI posters were “trolls” who were mean to him…and when I linked to the RI blog, to permit SBM posters decide who was aggressive, who used filthy and pejorative words, who is a misogynist…and who is a troll.

Some of the SBM posters tried to explain away his calling me a twat, because twat has a different meaning in the U.K., yet he posted that word at me on a blog that is based in the United States, as he damn well knew. There was no response or apology at RI or at SBM, because he meant to viciously attack me…just as he told others on RI to “go f*ck themselves”.

He has now taken to “tweeting” other women and threatening them with legal action, including a breast cancer survivor, who has, rightfully so, stated that he is promulgating quackery (megadoses of vitamins as supplementary treatment for cancer).

His calling me a “retard”, or any other poster using that word on this blog or any other science blog, evoked my usual strong response to defend developmentally disabled children and adults.

Notice I am not quaking in my boots by his threat or “Lisa’s” threats to sue me, as I have their deranged twisted posts as my defense and they have no grounds to sue me for liable, based on my posts.

@MSII: well, Orac *is* a surgeon. And I don’t know if the usage has changed, but traditionally, surgeons in the UK English speaking world were called “Mr”. So little Nigel might be just using the British usage. (I’m not sure if it still occurs or not…)

I looked at the “About” and “Contributors” pages, but failed to spot your notice of competing interest. You should mention it every time you post on the subject of cancer cure/prevention, or have a permanent clearly visible display of it somewhere on the page. Just sayin’.

Yes, Nigeepoo did make that clear. I was not aware of that distinction. I like to learn something every day, and that was my lesson for today. Strange though, that Mr. would be held in higher regard than Dr. for a surgeon.

Question: Which blogs insist on the use of manually-typed blockquote tags? Answer: Only that one

That’s… having a very limited experience of the internet.
One could retort, how many blogs/forums don’t have a way to quote something; or if they have it, either don’t advertise it readily, or the end result is not the most readable.
Quite a lot, actually. So many systems, so little time to learn…
There are a few very awkward comment systems over the internet; Scienceblogs, for its lack of preview, is far from the worse.

Note to Nigel: please stop being such a self-centered [insert absolutely not-gendered insult of choice].

More general note: I was reading an article on how tweeting and other fast-comment systems are blurring the line between oral and written exchanges; with the consequences that people get irked, either
– because the other guy/lady ‘s writing is barely better than spoken slang,
– or because the too-casual writer is confronted with “grammar nazis” and other people who insist that you should put some care in your writings

Strange though, that Mr. would be held in higher regard than Dr. for a surgeon.

This is based on history. Once upon a time, surgeons were barber-surgeons. They cut hair, let blood and performed amputations. It’s only fairly recently (from a historical perspective) that surgery became a skilled field. The titling convention of “Mr” stuck. As a child, I needed a hernia operation. I was surprised that the surgeon had the title “Mr” because my mother told me he was a special type of doctor.

The conversation has continued; and has ended. I had said what I wanted to say yesterday and only replied to a couple of things today.

I have very little expectations that he would succeed in any law suit that he is proposing. LW is right on the money: laws in the US about free speech would not be kind to Nigel.

Funnily enough, he refuses to post examples of case law or legislation to show that he has a fighting chance: because apparently to do so would be to reveal particulars about his own law suit. Or as he put it: “The Letter of Claim to Mitchell has strict instructions to not publicise any of the information within. I will not jeopardise my case to suit you.”

I don’t believe this to be true. In fact, by publicising said facts he could strengthen his case. By pointing to actual law suits that won with the same or similar arguments, he could quite easily convince those he’s threatening that he has some reason to think that he would win, thereby giving him leverage for a settlement.

What’s fun is that I continued to request that he, for the sake of lack of time, point me towards his best evidence. He just continued on about how I should just read his blog. He’s not very helpful, is he?

I posted above how he’s not a freedom of speech advocate: I just got blacklisted on his blog!

So he wins the badge for hypocrite of the year. (But hey, what do you expect from a guy who is furious over the fact that I wrote a comment *about* him after he left the blog, and after he requested that nobody ever talks to him again on this blog; apparently that was a big no no)

He seems to think that I have lots of time to post about him here. What he might not realise is that what I’m actually doing is five things at once, and didn’t intend to spend more than 30 minutes replying on his blog today. Or that I’m about a month’s worth of posts behind on RI and several thousand comments behind; or that I may only read one or two blogs a week. Or that you know, he’s the flavour of the month as it were.

@MSII

Of course you’re right. You are much more restrained and mature than I am, and I respect you for that. I also admire your attempts to engage Nigeepoo in rational dialogue on his blog but think it’s ultimately futile. It’s like DJT all over again: no amount of intelligent conversation can or will get through.

Thank you for those compliments. I suspect that I am only minorly more restrained, if only because this was me kicking a bee’s nest to see what came out. (Nigel, if you’re reading this, feel free to call me a troll if you like. You know you’re going to anyway) I do agree that it was futile, but more that you know it’s a bee’s nest, you know what will happen if you kick it, but by kicking it you prove to others what’s in the nest.

My whole point of engaging him was to find out how little or how much he had to back up his ideas of suing people. In particular people threatening to sue other people about what they believe is harmful language, even when it’s actually opinion, gets my annoyance up. I’ve discovered that the more evidence you ask of people who shout “shill” or “libel” (ie. pay stubs, case law) the more they look like fools when they can’t provide it. And it’s obvious to every one who reads that if they had evidence they’d post it; and a ‘conspiracy’ to keep said evidence from being posted only makes them look more foolish.

@Lilady

To be fair, I will say here (I said it on his blog) that I thought you were over the top. I also said that I know there was some prior familiarity between the two of you before I came into the conversation here, and so dismissed your comments as “I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not getting involved”. However, I do think that you engaged far more than you should have and did yourself no favours by throwing insults every which way and continuing to engage in what you yourself just called a troll.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion about the remarks I addressed to Nigeepoo.

He claims on this blog and the SBM blog that he was unaware of the fact that Orac is a breast surgeon, yet the day before Orac posted his Part I blog about Jolie’s surgery, where he identified himself as a breast cancer surgeon with an opinion about bilateral preventive BRCA gene mutations:

“Now, it needs to be pointed out here that a BRCA1 mutation, such as the one that Jolie had, is a very special situation, where the risk of cancer is known and very high. I’m normally not a fan of prophylactic surgery, and I tend not to do bilateral mastectomies in my practice except under certain circumstances (such as BRCA1 mutations).”

Nigeepoo first posed (a general question) to “anyone” posting here about the Lappe study at # 12; sophie8 said she had no opinion about it, after mentioning she did see multiple entrees for the author Lappe.

Nigeepoo then replied in a snarky manner to sophia8…then I told him, IMO, his reply was pure snark and unwarranted…or as you state “over-the-top”. I then proceed to link, to the first of the two articles that I located that pointed out the limitations of the Lappe study.

Thereafter, only several other commenters dealt with the Lappe study, while many other posters, I see, preferred to engage Nigeepoo in endless comments about his lack of “blockquoting” skills.

My third and final link was to a blog Orac had posted last year, about the quackery of Vitamin D megadoses for cancer treatments.

When he called me a “crazy cat lady, a twat and a retard”, I, and I alone, took him to task for his filthy labeling of me and the use of the pejorative word “retard”. Did you post a comment, in my defense that I missed…or that somehow got lost in cyberspace?

Did you, or any other posters defend me when I linked to dictionary entry for the work “twat”…I don’t think so.

You preferred to offer some uninformed “legal opinions” about Nigeepoo’s threats to sue me and managed to dwell on his lack of abilities to “blockquote” both here and on the several scurrilous articles he blogged about me on his own blog, never mentioning the filthy remark about me (“twat and a retard”).

BTW, several people who posted on the SBM blog DID take offense and DID defend me against Nigeepoo’s use of the filthy insult directed at me. One man, not known to
RI, defended me on Nigeepoo’s blog; another man, not known to RI, defended me on Nigeepoo’s Twitter account.

It’s only now that I look for the definition of twat and I should have done something about it because I find it more insulting compared to retard (which is offensive). Please excuse me and be sure I take it as a lesson.

Funnily enough, he refuses to post examples of case law or legislation to show that he has a fighting chance: because apparently to do so would be to reveal particulars about his own law suit. Or as he put it: “The Letter of Claim to Mitchell has strict instructions to not publicise any of the information within. I will not jeopardise my case to suit you.”

Nigeepoo mentions that his “legal eagles” are a law firm that specializes in “reputation management.” Maybe he should consider retaining Wayne Dolcefino to represent him stateside, as Wayne has done such a great job in the same capacity for Burzynski? 🙂

Oh, and I notice that the comments he whinged about being “censored” have now appeared on SBM.

Honestly, why would Orac or his “friend” want to block Nigeepoo’s comments? Those comments are the best indicators of his “state of mind,” if you know what I mean? Nige is not doing his reputation a favour by posting comments.

Yesterday I thought about exhibiting my mad skillz in negotiation** in regards to the current dispute. However I was unable because my ( friend, cousin, ex) all sustained recent injuries and were crying, “Helfs me!” loudly, so how could I refuse? – 2 hour+ long phone calls / gin and sympathy take time.

I do have time now:
I observe though that Nigee may be moving on ( see his new posts) and hasn’t shown up here for a while.

Although there are dozens of issues, I shall focus on a few that just pop into my head – in no particular order:

1. Using sex-based insults gets people very angry. Although t–t has become more generic, it still smarts when thrown. Would it be apropo to call a guy a w—er, t—er, p—ter or p—k to his face***? No. Even though they now mean less than what they used to mean.

2. Suing is very un-kosher- unless someone is physically harmed or devastating injury is done to his or her reputation.
This is the internet – people can say anything and it can get rough. Major woo-meisters like to sue rather than provide data or do research. We like data instead.

Both parties are educated adults and should to able to absorb verbal shocks to their systems.

3. I feel that Nigee is a smart guy who has been misled by alt med prevaricators ( the kind of people I survey). He has not had an education in the life sciences and thus is a prime target. He might be converted if he gets the data – he is not a lost cause**** and could be an asset. And he can sing. He also likes our cleverness and *joie de vivre*.
Who doesn’t?

4. RI has a unique culture with many lacunae and many mansions in it. Nigel insulted a Kahuna/ Ali’i who brings us fresh data on schedule. She fights woo on a daily basis.
However, Nigel was a newbie.

Orac – in his fabled mercy- did not ban Nigel. Perhaps he saw what I saw. Tolerance is the beginning of understanding but it need go both ways.

We are evangelists of SBM: occasionally when we ‘declare its honour unto the heathen’***** we should expect resistance prior to acceptance. And perhaps- like the early Christians- a few spears or arrows headed in our general directions. Take a few for the cause.

Lilady has bigger dragons to slay than Nigel. He might even be a target for her missionary work.
Nigel’s blog says he likes evidence from research. So do we..

My fees can be paid in GBP, USD, AUD etc. No euros please I hate them.
send them to me @:
DW, the Cliffs, Northern Hemisphere.

** I got university credit afterall.
*** behind his back is another story
**** was I wrong about PGP (+) or prn (-)?
***** yes, I know the song

This is based on history. Once upon a time, surgeons were barber-surgeons. They cut hair, let blood and performed amputations.

This made me think of the Steve Martin character Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber from Saturday Night Live many years ago. I hope the reference is relevant to the television programming in your country.

The character’s answer to everything was bloodletting.

I tried to find some YouTube clips but they are all blocked in Canada due to copyright. You can try Googling in your country but outside the US I doubt if you’ll have any luck.

Nigeepoo made a big issue of Orac’s alleged conflict of interest. Yet, Nige, who promotes and pushes vitamins to cure all mankind’s ills, has an affiliate marketing partnership with a vitamin retailer and receives a commission (or kickback) from the sale of all vitamin products purchased through a link on his blog!!

I believe that Nigel is like two bright guys I know: they are well educated and professional in fields outside of SBM/ life sciences ( business). Thus they read alt med ‘research’ ( also see today’s post by Orac) and don’t get how it DOESN’T work in reality. It sounds like nutrients can do all of these wonderful things – that they can’t- at least not in RL. But the woo-meisters don’t tell you that part. We do.

So of course they think that these products are very useful- and they need celtic salt or ground organic flaxseed- as I know all too well.

However, if they’re smart- we can talk to them:
explaining how that *in vitro/ in vivo* thing works.
Or- as I often do- illustrating how much of the so-called science they read ( woo) is actually more accurately called “advertising copy”.

We are decidedly more [email protected] around here:
squidhats are frowned upon, gentlemen always wear shirts with buttons and ladies never say “[email protected]” aloud except when they have indignantly righteous cause.

Be warned that there are other forms of English used in the world and not all your meanings of words translate to other English speaking countries. As an example we in the fabled land of Oz wear thongs on our feet and rooting for your team means your are copulating for them. In Nigepoos defense twat in his vernacular means an idiot and it is a term that describes him perfectly 🙂

Dedicated Lurker – I’m perfectly willing to believe that certain words that are considered quite offensive here have lost that sting in the UK. But I’ve known a number of people from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and, yes, England – and none of them have ever used twat in that fashion. I personally still consider it unnecessarily offensive.

We don’t take offense at being told we have nice fannies. You should not take offense at being called a twat. Probably best to avoid overheated invective in the first place especially given the amount of thin skinned individuals one finds in virtual space.

In my neck of the woods twat is universally used as a synonym of Idiot, mind you it is not used often. I prefer ‘Flaming Galah’ myself although I am fond of ‘Drongo’.

BTW Flip if you read this congrats on getting on his whitelist but sorry about your head and that brickwall.

I realise I’ve been away from this thread for a while. Way back up the thread, Lisa objected to frozen fish pies.

Lisa, if you are still here, over the weekend I made a bunch of pies, some meat and some fruit, for serving at a medieval feast. We made them from scratch, including the pastry, using organic ingredients. some of the fruit waseven home grown. And amazingly, some of the pies would even be vegan friendly, because amongst the feast attendees we have egg alleries, lactose intolerance and gluten intolerance, so making vegan fruit pies means they can eat dessert.

And then… WE FROZE THE PIES, because the feast isn’t for another week. Did we do something wrong?

Less than two weeks after Angelina Jolie described her decision to have a double mastectomy to avoid breast cancer in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, her aunt, Debbie Martin, has died of the disease in Escondido, Calif., The Associated Press reported. She was 61 and died on Sunday.

Ms. Martin was the younger sister of Ms. Jolie’s mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died of ovarian cancer in 2007. Ms. Jolie wrote in The Times on May 14 that it was her mother’s death and the presence of a defective gene, BRCA1, which increases her risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer, that prompted her to have preventive surgery.

Ron Martin, Ms. Martin’s husband, confirmed to The A.P. that she also had the BRCA1 gene, but was not aware of it until after her 2004 cancer diagnosis. “Had we known, we certainly would have done exactly what Angelina did,” he said.

He added that after learning she had breast cancer his wife had her ovaries removed because, like several other women in her family, she had a high genetic risk for ovarian cance

Unfortunately, this was one of the rare times I broke my rule about reading the entire post and resulting comments *first*. I hadn’t been to RI in over a month, and looked down the comment list on the sidebar, saw an unfamiliar name and clicked on it. I was curious to see what the latest discussion was; but neglected to start from the beginning. The first thing I saw was Nigel’s comment on blockquoting. I was confused, so asked a question about it. I wasn’t intending to sidetrack the discussion or anything, I just didn’t understand the logic and so asked. I posted my question, then went back up to the top of the page to read from the beginning and worked my way down, in between doing actual work, and coming back to the bottom of the thread to catch the replies. It’s my own darn fault for coming in mid-stream and one of the reasons I dislike doing it.

I did indeed follow the context once I read most of the comments (with some minor confusion regarding what seemed to me to be prior familiarity with him – and one that I assumed came from past threads that I’d missed over the month), and I agree with you that his attitude was not above reproach either.

Did you post a comment, in my defense that I missed…or that somehow got lost in cyberspace?

As for the rest: I have said here and on Nigel’s blog that I did not understand the context. I know you well enough to state that you probably had a good reason for being upset. I did see those comments and dismissed them because I assumed that there was some sort of ramp up that I had missed (perhaps on SBM or another thread) and because I was reading backwards and forwards I kind of felt like I was talking past the original conversation in some ways. Once again, I didn’t know what was going on and wasn’t going to get involved.

If you’d like me to back you up and support you, that’s understandable: but please don’t expect me to do so when I know nothing of what’s going on, the lead-up to the insults, or anything else. I don’t have the time to read SBM, I don’t have the time to read every post on RI. And on this one unfortunate occasion I did what shouldn’t be done: I went ahead and burned the thread from both ends (to completely mangle a phrase) by reading from the top and replying at the bottom at the same time. It’s hard enough trying to keep up with the comments, it’s harder to keep up with them whilst at the same time trying to wrap your head around the context in which they happen.

I did/do not like the insults and I respectfully asked him to move on from using them in the discussion. I wasn’t overt, maybe I should have been.

As a bystander, as someone who came in not knowing the context all I saw was insults being thrown from both sides, which I think you’ll agree that we’re supposed to be better than the name-calling trolls. He said that if he’s going to be called names, then he’s going to call names back. You did call him names once he called you some. Who is taking the high road here?

You preferred to offer some uninformed “legal opinions” about Nigeepoo’s threats to sue me and managed to dwell on his lack of abilities to “blockquote” both here and on the several scurrilous articles he blogged about me on his own blog, never mentioning the filthy remark about me (“twat and a retard”).

I’m guessing at this point that I have a thicker skin in regards to being called names. And yet being called all sorts of names my whole life I am certainly not without empathy. I’m sorry that you think calling him on his lack of ability to sue people was less important than, I don’t know, calling him names right back. I would have hoped that different people using different debate tactics is a good thing, but I guess we should have all just piled on and hammered away at the issue of the Lappe study.

What’s worse is that I never offered legal opinions; I outright said I’m no lawyer, but have an interest in it and had been reading some stuff about it of late, and that based on that am skeptical that he could sue people. Having been threatened before I find obnoxious and vexatious hollow threats to be annoying and I wanted to call him on it. I asked repeatedly to be shown information that would back up his assertions, FOR THE PURE REASON THAT I WANTED TO BE PROVEN WRONG. This is now interpreted as “offering uninformed legal opinions”. I said I was skeptical and I asked questions regarding his assertions: does this skepticism thing we do only apply to science or medicine, and only to topics you approve of? F* me and here I thought I was trying to educate myself by asking some questions and expecting a direction towards resources.

Consider this my version of “agree to disagree”. I will not randomly take sides in an argument I just entered and have no idea what the hell is going on. You probably feel that I should have given the names he used; I prefer to think that context is important when you enter a conversation that’s already started. (which as it happens, is the exact thing we complained about a while ago regarding alt-medders who pop in and don’t bother reading the site before diving in)

(I hope this is well explained, I sense I’m not saying what I mean to say but am struggling to find the right language right now)

Oh, and I just read #469… Delurked Lurker is right. I am Australian, and would also subscribe to the notion that twat=idiot. I’ve never bothered to look up the actual meaning of the word, so I guess yeah, my own fault on that too.

@MSII

Yes, it’s perfectly fine for him to blacklist me on his blog; but it’s not ok if someone manually moderates his comments on another blog. Like I said: hypocrite.

@Delurked Lurker

Thanks. But I think he just mistook me for a ‘nice’ person. As soon as he discovered I wasn’t going to play ball and keep asking for evidence, he decided to blacklist me.

Flaming galah… what a yobbo term. Does that come with a conveniently over the top “Aw-stray-lan” accent? 😉

@Christine

Man, I need to come over to your house for some pie… er, excuse me, now I need to find some food!

I am the Mitchell the honourable Mr. Kinbrum increasingly likes to refer to on various blogs. With others I run a small blog in the UK primarily promoting a high fat low carb diet for the control of diabetes. Mr. Kinbrum started to post comments on our blog extolling the virtues of supplements. The dialogue went rapidly down hill when we stated supplements cannot cure diabetes. Evidently Mr Kinbrum was once “nearly a diabetic” we tried to inform him “nearly a diabetic” was very different from being a diagnosed diabetic. As I now know to be the standard mode of behaviour for Mr. Kinbrum, the insults and verbal abuse started coming in. This MO has been very well illustrated on this blog and many other blogs. This phenomenon is not new I have found, and it appears Mr. Kinbrum has a long history of hurling verbal abuse, insults and threats at people who do not agree with him.

It is my opinion Mr. Kinbrum has made a complete fool of himself for a long time on many blogs. His pushing of supplements became clear yesterday, when I learned via a poster here that Mr. Kinbrum earns a commission for promoting supplements on his blog (which I refuse to waste my time reading). I have yet to be told of the comments or statements Mr. Kinbrum believes has lead to defamation of his character. One thing is certain, if I have besmirched his name more than he has done himself, I will be very much surprised. Mr. Kinbrum has publicly stated “In the UK, pursuing someone for libel/defamation/harassment begins with a “Letter of Claim”, which is like a “Cease & Desist” notice” I look forward to receiving this “Letter of Claim” Will I be asked to “desist” from making a bigger fool of Mr. Kinbrum than he has done for himself ? If that is the case, my compliance will be easy to achieve, because no one does it like Nigeepoo. He has turned buffoonery and stupidity into a science, possibly a new art form.

@ Flip: The usual practice on blogs is to read what the blogger has written about the topic and then to read the comments made prior. If you had done so, you would have found that I (and only a few other other posters), had provided links to the Lappe study…as well as the opinion that it was poorly constructed, poorly executed and had the major obstacle of a changing endpoint.

The study was supposed to test whether Vitamin D and Calcium oral supplements would lower the risks of bone fractures in groups of postmenopausal women who were randomly assigned to two groups. Group A received the Vitamin D/Calcium supplements; Group B received placebos.

At the completion of the study, the hypothesis about bone fracture prevention was not proven. The study then changed “the end point” and looked at both study arms to see if Vitamin D/Calcium oral supplements-vs-placebos, lowered the risk for breast cancer. The experts who analyzed the study and the changing end-points, rightfully so, declared that change in endpoints greatly devalued the conclusion of the study.

Did Lappe check family history for breast and ovarian cancer? Did they test each participant for the presence of BRCA gene mutations or other rarer gene mutations? Did they do intense medical histories for other (non-genetic) breast cancer risk factors?

Nigeepoo demanded an answer from Orac and turned on me and other posters when we explained how blogs work as an open forum…not a one-on-one dialogue between him and the physician/blogger. I provided a post/link written by Orac last year about VitaminD/Calcium supplements…again I was one of the few posters who provided “answers” and a link to Nigeepoo’s off-topic, thread-hijacking posts.

I called him on “Twat” and “Retard” and linked to the dictionary definition of twat and called him on using the pejorative “retard” word. No one else commented on those words…nor did you when you finally came on the blog. He certainly did know that he was posting on a blog located in the United States where twat is a vile, sexist, put-down, when said to a woman face-to-face, when referring to a woman, or when posted at a woman on a public internet forum.

So you do admit that you really did not read Orac’s blog and all the comments in sequence, yet you chose to dwell on nigeepoo’s lack of block quoting skills, to engage him here and on his blog.

Perhaps you didn’t read my comment # 442…perhaps I should have directed that comment directly at you…where I stated my feelings about Nigeepoos behaviors…and trolling his blog.

Now, you have addressed me directly with this comment…after admitting that you didn’t read the blog and didn’t read the comments in sequence:

“@Lilady

To be fair, I will say here (I said it on his blog) that I thought you were over the top. I also said that I know there was some prior familiarity between the two of you before I came into the conversation here, and so dismissed your comments as “I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not getting involved”. However, I do think that you engaged far more than you should have and did yourself no favours by throwing insults every which way and continuing to engage in what you yourself just called a troll.

Take your own advice perhaps…”

I’m calling bullsh!t on your lame excuse, your lack of sensitivity and your pandering to Nigeepoo on his blog. I don’t even know what gender you are, but everyone I hang with, finds those misogynist, sexist, pejorative words unacceptable…and deserving of contempt.

Furthermore, you behaved as a troll, here on RI, and on Nigeepoo’s blog, by continually baiting him with his lack of block quoting skills.

@ Eddie Mitchell: I’ve read your blog and I also found an E-Book published by Nigeepoo, extolling the virtues of high fat/high protein, low carb diets, along with large doses of vitamins for weight loss:

When the Troll’s “opinions” are challenged, he resorts to filthy inappropriate comments, then threatens lawsuits…in order to silence his critics.

No, I do not believe he is an intelligent, yet somehow misguided blogger, who is “open minded”. He’s stepped over the edge of common decency with his vicious attacks and threats directed at anyone or everyone who disagrees with his “nutritional advice”.

“My defamation case against Mitchell is proceeding nicely. He should have received the 28-page “Letter of Claim” by now. He has until Wednesday 5th June to comply with the terms of the letter, or face high court proceedings and an injunction.”

The usual practice on blogs is to read what the blogger has written about the topic and then to read the comments made prior. If you had done so, you would have found that I (and only a few other other posters), had provided links to the Lappe study…as well as the opinion that it was poorly constructed, poorly executed and had the major obstacle of a changing endpoint.

I agree with you. The first thing I did was apologise for doing what I normally don’t do, *because* it causes problems like this.

Thank you for the summation, but I did actually read the entire thread (although not in a chronological order) and did become aware of the issues at hand; but not before I had started posting and not before I understood what the name calling was about.

So you do admit that you really did not read Orac’s blog and all the comments in sequence, yet you chose to dwell on nigeepoo’s lack of block quoting skills, to engage him here and on his blog.

Are you purposefully misunderstanding me? I said straight out: I clicked on the recent comments, saw Nigel’s thing about blockquoting and asked him a question. I wasn’t “dwelling” on anything: I can’t exactly involve myself in the actual conversation if I’m still reading my way through it.

You know what, it’s not worth the argument. I apologise for diving into a conversation and breaking my own rules.

I do NOT apologise for suggesting that fighting fire with fire is not a good tactic. I do NOT apologise for suggesting that it makes us all look like hypocrites.

I’m calling bullsh!t on your lame excuse, your lack of sensitivity and your pandering to Nigeepoo on his blog. I don’t even know what gender you are, but everyone I hang with, finds those misogynist, sexist, pejorative words unacceptable…and deserving of contempt.

Feel free. I care little about your opinion of me, but perhaps you need to re-read what I typed above:

I’m guessing at this point that I have a thicker skin in regards to being called names. And yet being called all sorts of names my whole life I am certainly not without empathy. … Delurked Lurker is right. I am Australian, and would also subscribe to the notion that twat=idiot. I’ve never bothered to look up the actual meaning of the word, so I guess yeah, my own fault on that too.

I told him to stop the insults. That I didn’t do it while calling him names is not, I think, a bad thing. That you think I was pandering to him shows I guess, that you don’t understand my tone. I am perfectly capable of ripping into someone: but my particular forte is subersiveness.

That you prefer it if I had taken another tone is fine by me. I don’t mind at all that you have completely missed the mark, as so many other people do, about my behaviour or what I intended.

Oh and my gender: I’m not sure it matters. Since when do only females get to be disgusted by the usage of sexist terms?

@Delurked Lurker

Hmmm… probably. I’m having a little bit of a vocabulary problem lately.

Nigel did indeed put me on a blacklist. I’m not entirely sure if that just meant “comments blocked” or “comments moderated”. I have had other things to do and had my fill of the ‘conversation’ so hadn’t bothered to post again to see which it was.

It’s nice to know he explained “twat” on SBM – how unfortunate it is that he missed the bit where I said I don’t read it. And if he really doesn’t understand my apology to Lilady, then he’s an idiot.

It appears that Mr Nigel was not entirely pleased with yours truly. *Quel domage*.
He doesn’t get it that citing a study and having some money in your pocket will get you a cab ride in most places- and little else. The study he cited is not the best and has already been critiqued here.
That’s why I say that he, like the bright businessmen, doesn’t see the larger picture wherein a study often is just the start- not the end- of the trail.
However, I think that he can learn by reading more of Orac and those other people @ SBM.
Good one by Dr Novella recently,

All holistic medicine is proven worthless. You must trust only the cancer industry with your life, whose profits go to winning the US war on Cancer. Your family & friends are fallen solders in an endless war. Your enemy that will kill you if you do not fight for the American Cancer Society & American Medical Association, your only hope to defeat such a deadly foe. To war patriots !